Episode 12 Haunted Roads

Hello everyone, welcome to episode twelve of Light Someone Still Scared. My name is Graham Millman. My name is Clarence Wanson. And tonight we explore haunted rooms. How are you doing, Karen? I'm very well, how are you? I'm fine, thank you very much. Uh how have you been and what have you been up to?

I have been very, very well, and I haven't been doing much at all.

I see. Such is the exciting life of the podcaster, am I right? Very true. Today's exploration will take us, unlike some of the other places I guess, to the wild open stretches of Scotland and England. Haunted Roads I do like a good haunted roads story, and we've got some beauties tonight lined up for you. So without further ado, Carlin's going to tell us about something tonight. What have you got in store for us to kick off?

I have got a very well known well well known for when it comes to haunted roads, uh the ghosts of Bluebell Hill. Bluebell Hill A two two nine in Kent.

Very nice.

Bluebell Hill is a chalk hill on the north doors between Maystone and Rochester in Kent.

Alright.

I'm not sure if I have driven on it. I probably have. And the A229 crosses the hill that links the M20 and the M2. So it's quite a major road.

Okie dokie.

The route follows the line of much older road, which describes as a former Roman road. And many reports centre on the stretch near the Lower Bell Pub and the old Chattenham Road. And the area is known for apparitions that appear beside or directly in front of moving vehicles.

Alright.

And the A 229 is frequently described as one of Britain's most haunted roads.

Mm-hmm.

It's not the first time that we have apparitions suddenly appear in front of roads. I think we've discussed them before, haven't we?

Yes, there's been a few stories peppered around with the dangerous stuff, isn't it?

Even one in Leatherhead. Yes. The Lofty Lady.

I love that name. She lived in a loft, didn't she? She probably did.

Ah right, so back to the story. So there was a real tragedy on the road in the 19th of November in 1965. So it's a a few years ago now.

Okay.

Four young ladies were travelling on a volcatina when it collided with a jaguar near the Bluebell Hill. Susan, who is often written as Suzanne Brown, was age 22 and is engaged to an RAF technician Brian Wetton. There was also like three passengers as well. There's a Judith Lingham, who was also age twenty-two, Patricia Ferguson, also age twenty two, and there was twenty-one-year-old Jillian Burgett, and she was the only survivor in the crash. Right. Patricia reportedly died at or shortly after the scene, and Suzanne and June subsequently died in hospital. Right. Um but it's Susan who's commonly said to have returned to her hen night, or she was due to be married the following day. But you know, it it depends on what's the ri story is, whether it's specifically the hen night or whether it was a precise wedding day, then they're not quite sure.

Right.

Which is interesting if they're saying that it's her because she didn't die at the scene.

Oh okay.

Where the other girl did. Yeah. Um but they still say it's her. But she's described as uh a young woman in white waiting at the side of the road. Uh motorists will stop and offer her a lift, and the passenger gives an address but then disappears from the vehicle before arriving. And in some versions the driver visits the address and is told that a young woman died there years earlier. Uh this follows the traditional vanishing hitchhiker, which is very common, isn't it? The hitchhiker.

Uh it is, and and as you as you'll probably find out later, because I've got a very similar Sony story. It's it's a real a trope, but interesting. Indeed. Is it an urban legend or is it real?

But then saying that though, it could be that the haunting might have pre-date that crash, because in 1965 the action is now treated as the origins of the haunting. But there may be something too simple with that. Apparently a local journalist Peter Harbour investigated the disappearing of Hitchhiker story for the Maidstone Gazette in 1968, initially found only secondhand stories and could not locate a definite witness despite months of research.

Right.

He later reportedly said that he had traced around twelve first hand witnesses, but they would not reveal their identity. Some researchers believe stories of strange women otherwise exist around the hill before 1965.

Right.

Um so the crash therefore only provided an older local legend with identifiable names of a tragic modern explanation. So possibility. So there was a Morris Good Enough, which is a marvellous name.

I think so.

Thirteenth of july nineteen seventy-four. Now Morris was a bricklayer from Rochester, and during the early hours a young girl suddenly stepped into the road in front of his vehicle. He believed he'd struck her with considerable force. He stopped and reportedly found the girl lying in the road with cuts on her forehead and knees. He carried her over to the Verge and covered her with a blanket. He then drove to Rochester police station to report the collision, which I suppose they didn't have phones, so you couldn't ring them either. When the police returned with him, the girl had vanished, but the blanket reportedly remained. But a search found no injured child and no explanation for her disappearance.

Strange you never took the injured party and left her.

Hmm. Yeah, you would think they perhaps he would have picked her up and took her. That would be the most logical thing to do.

He maybe bricked it.

Well perhaps he did, yeah.

If you think about his occupation, sorry.

But then yeah. Sorry, that nearly went over my head. I caught it just in time there.

Can't help it, can I?

But in the seventh of November 1992, an Ian Sharp was driving along the A 229 late at night when a woman in a light coloured clothing suddenly appeared directly in front of his car. He immediately reported making eye contact with her before the impact, and he believed he'd struck her and stopped the vehicle. No injured woman or body or clear evidence of a collision could be found, and the instance reportedly communicated to the police. So I thought he actually looked her in the eyes before he hit her.

Yeah.

And then later in November 1992, a Chris Dawkins reportedly saw a woman wearing a red headscarf run into the path of his car. He felt and heard an impact against the vehicle. When he stopped, no woman could be found. His father and the police reportedly helped search for the area without finding any injured position. The red headscarf makes this apparition notably more different from the usual woman in light. So it could be several women in different clothing going out. It could be the same person with a extensive wardrobe, yeah. But also, I mean there's a child as well. So that's creepy. That is very weird, isn't it?

And the fact police were involved, and and you know, uh I guess these things must be recorded be really interesting to check out the uh you know the actual reports.

I mean there would be police reports if the police were involved.

Yeah, real interesting.

Yes, so it all I mean all the hauntings stem back to this accident in 1965, but yeah the chances are this has been going on for years before that, and it's just uh that they've just latched onto that str that crash. So yeah, so that's the bill, the blue bill is.

It's very interesting. I like the um the idea of the impact being felt. I find that quite interesting. I've also heard on a few occasions that the ghosts themselves have um ended up in the car, as in the car going through the which and then the person driving the car is has described the temperature becoming freezing and staying cold for you know further ten minutes. I find that really intriguing.

That is quite airy as well. The thought of someone actually in the car with you as you've hit them.

Yeah. Well, my first story tonight is basically on Skye, Island Isle of Skye, which is uh obviously an incredibly difficult place to drive today with the amount of tourists. Uh we were up there years ago, and you know the roads are busy without a doubt. And there's been stories circulating around the island and in the highlands about phantom cars for a long, long time. And the cars that are seen generally appear to be vintage cars, Austin's and that kind of thing, from the 1930s up to about the 1950s, been phantom lorries witnessed there. So I'm gonna sort of go through a few of these, which I think are probably the most interesting. So they've been around for decades, these stories, they've been witnessed by policemen, doctors doing the rounds, farmers, and of course tourists. And the source of a lot of these encounters, of course, have been from websites, forums, and journals, but I did get a couple of wee personal stories along the way. The first one, however, was posted on a website called Secret Scotland, and in it the author recounted hearing a tale of a phantom car which is seen racing along the roads near Slygaken, and I hope I've pronounced that correctly, bridge, with its lights blazing at full beam. So this guy had never had any first hand experience of it, but he's fascinated by the subject, and on striking up a conversation with uh the owner of a local farmhouse, he asked if she'd heard something about the ghost car, and apparently her eyes lit up, and she leant forward towards him in a conspiratorial fashion and began her story and recounted that it was common knowledge that the car's appearance was mainly confined to the old coast road Ayus Lygachen, which is near Portry, and further stated that in recent times the sightings had dwindled, possibly due to the road being less used. She then took him outside where she drew his attention to an old chest which was stored in a nearby barn, and it had at one point belonged to her father-in-law, and it apparently been the property of a farmer who was killed in a car crash at Slygaken. So, could this guy who died whenever this farmer could it be his car that's been seen doing these fateful journeys? So it's basically an old Austin, and take for example uh this actual account by a local postman called Neil McDermott who described an eerie encounter while delivering his mail. So it took place at night during the night of the full moon, which makes it even spookier. Yes. So strange place to be delivering mail at midnight, but never mind. Uh but while doing his rounds without warning, he felt a sudden chill creep over him and glancing towards the shore, clearly saw an old Austin travelling at high speed with its front lights burning, and as he drew nearer he noted a faint glow coming from within it but couldn't see a driver, so it was literally a car driving itself. The car never veered off to the right before vanishing. So that encounter was featured in a book uh called A Gazetteer of Scottish Ghosts by Peter Underwood, which I I'm sure a lot of people listening have have got or at least read. It's a pretty good book. So one theory that suggests the the origin of the car comes from April 1959, when allegedly a local minister, the Reverend Alec McLean, picked up some locals who we met on the road and offered them a lift to the ferry port at Kyleeken, and being a you know a close-knit community it was not uncommon for islanders to help each other in this way. What happened next reports vary, but it was suggested that either the car went into the water by accident because of a failure of brakes at the quayside or on the ferry it went into the water. Now the water wasn't particularly deep, but it was enough to cover the car, and so the Reverend Escaped as passengers died, and this car is meant to be potentially the car. Now why it would be driving around on its own uh and he himself wasn't you know killed in the uh incident uh is is unknown. But um allegedly this did happen, so was this the origin of the phantom car? I mean it could be people's imaginations, but it seems like it's a pretty um it seems that sightings are too common to be that. One driver, for example, saw the car in broad daylight, another one by local doctors saw a car again describes an old awesome with a single lamp at the front flying around the roads uh between Kylie Ken and Broadford and was known as the Wee Black Car. So after 1962, allegedly the sightings have stopped. But I mean they still continue to this day, but not necessarily in Sky, they seem to have gone on the mainland. I'm not saying for a minute it's the same car, but it's something that's really ongoing. And the most common thing is that there's never any figures seen as such, there's never anybody seen driving it, but it drives itself. There's also been a van scene, and cars have actually followed the van in the dark, and the van's illuminated, and then at the last minute the van vanishes, and the cars are left like heading towards a wall or a building. So you know there's been a lot of crashes either happened or have just narrowly been avoided. So why this thing would be luring people to potential death, I've no idea. But this has been going on for some time. But anyway, yeah, a lot of the policemen have reported this as well, and uh but they can make nothing of it. Um but anyhow, that's just the big outline of what's been going on in the sky as far as these black cars go on. But well, we'll continue with these stories in a moment, but we'll be heading into the mainland, because the stories are kind of similar, but except in the mainland, it appears to be more actual figures have been seen, which is strange, either within the car or or near the sightings of the black car. So whether it's a victim of a car crash being seen next to the car, we don't know. But but there is a variation between the two parts. Anyway, I'll stop now. Anyhow, Karen, that's the ghost car of Sky. Uh, what do you have next for us?

I have got what Chris Rea called the Road to nowhere.

Road to Hell I don't any music by Chris Rea.

Apparently he based it on the M25. Oh, did he? That's where we're going. Oh dear, so the M25 is the orbital motorway surrounding most of Greater London and Prixley 117 miles long and passed through Kent, Surrey, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Greater London and Essex. And uh different sections opened from 1970s onwards, and the completed route was formally opened in 1986. Now my mum actually did do a cleaning job for the workers of said section or nine of M25, and she said it was very scary.

Really, yeah.

Usually after curry nine I can imagine.

Oh the horrors she used to tell me.

I can imagine, so Oh dear the poor woman. Anyway. So on with the stories. So on January uh twenty ninth of 2009, between junction eighteen and nineteen, a motorist called Karen Thompson was driving along the M25 near Chirley Wood in Hertfordshire, when she saw an enormous black feline sitting on the edge of the field beside the motorway. She estimated that it was around ten times larger than a dog. The road at this point was comparatively straight, which may have allowed her to watch the animal for longer than a fleeting glance. But I mean there's no other witnesses to this as well. Right. This classifies it as an alien black cat. Okay. So I mean it could be a genuine large black cat. I mean, we went to uh a talk a few weeks back that was this guy was saying about black cats. That's very true, black panthers and such like when they like was released in the 1970s, wouldn't they?

And that's correct.

Roaming around the English countryside. Um so yeah, I mean that is like a that's a weird one. I mean, surely there would have been other people if that cat was that size, is what she said.

Ten times a dog, and what's a dog?

What kind of dog? Could it be a chihuahua? Ten times the size of chihuahua? It'll be a dog.

But we'll find that's pretty abnormal I have to say.

Apparently there's a shadow man on Chorleywood Common, which is near the M25, so it's not actually on the M25, but near it. Alright, so on New Year's Eve morning of 2015, two people walking at Chorley Common, which is near the M25, and these people were walking there at props at twelve thirty AM and one AM when they reportedly saw a shadowy figure wearing a long coat. The figure appeared to vanish and reappear over a distance, which seemed impossible to cover normally. One of the witnesses called Happy New Year and ran towards it.

Oh yeah I think I think it'd be doing the opposite, to be fair.

By the time the witness reached the area, the figure had completely disappeared. The identity and connection to the motorway remains unknown, so they never really knew who was there. Very weird. Very strange that one. Mind you, who would be more scared? The ghost of some random man. Screaming at you.

I wonder if it's got any connection to UFOs or alien things. Because it also is a bit strange, doesn't it?

Yeah, I mean at Junction 26 and 27 uh is near Epping Forest. Yeah. The M25 passes through the Epping Forest area in Essex. So we're back to Essex again. Yep. Yeah, we've done there a couple of times. At Bell Common, the motorway travels through a covered cart and cover tunnel constructed took place between 1982 and 1984, which is relatively quick for a tunnel for construction. Indeed. The cover design has helped to reduce the motorway's impact in the surrounding landscape and the animal movement. Um and obviously Epic Forest um has had centuries of folklore before even the motorway was built. Um so this forest is notorious with highwaymen who targeted travellers en route from London. Dick Turpin, we've mentioned Dick Turpin before. And Tom King are among the highwaymen traditionally associated with the area. Stories from the wider forest include phantom riders, spectral figures, and unexplained lights, so as you said, about UFOs. Or it could be orbs, I suppose. Yes. The forest has also acquired a dark modern reputation of places where criminals concealed murder victims.

Yeah, but I find that more disturbing, I have to say.

So these have helped create uh dangerous and haunting around the forest roads, so yes. So then also we've got the spectral bride of South Mims. Okay. So South Mims is associated with the M25 and the motorway services. I've stayed at South Mims a couple of times, actually.

Is it a village? It's um travel lodge place.

Service station.

I got ya. It was a memorable trip then, oh rounding my fingers.

The female apparition become known as Spectral Bride. She's said to be a woman whose romantic hopes had ended in happiness. And tradition claims that she appears when a wedding takes place at the church, and local people were uncertain whether she's envied the couple, mourn the happiness denied her, or appears to bless them. So dear, she sounds quite sad, doesn't she? I mean she don't need no man.

Hope they give her an invite.

So apparently a parishioner named Miss Long reportedly saw a female apparition hovering a few inches above the altar in daylight. Okay. When she looked away, her attention was drawn to the figure of a priest kneeling at the choir stalls. Two days later the village received news that the Reverend William Woods had died in Bournemouth, and Woods had served as the parish vicar approximately thirty years earlier. So the account therefore contains two apparitions the spectral bride and the former priest.

That's unusual. And certainly in the same instance more or less.

Indeed. So um yeah, so if she found a ghostly groom, then he could marry her, then she'll be happy.

Could all work out. Maybe.

In january nineteen eighty-five, a driver travelling towards London reportedly saw an unusual object while on the M twenty five nearbag shop. Uh the object was described as saucer-shaped. Its edges reportedly resembled the angular outline of a fifty-pence piece. White lights were visible from the front and blue lights from the rear. Promoters reportedly watched it for between five and eight minutes. And duration makes the report more than a flash, so obviously he was there and he was looking at it for a long time. So this is probably classified as a UFO. So yes, so you were joking about UFOs, but now they're on the N twenty five.

Well, I wonder if the old uh would it be the MOD that records these things have uh taken note of these could very well be incidents. Who knows?

Indeed, yes. Well I mean the N twenty five is uh a nightmare. Is it I once stuck on the M25 for nine hours, but then there you go.

Well that's why I don't drive, because I've I've never fancied all the horror stories. Not ghosts, I mean just the general game from A B.

I mean that hour sh that ride should have took me an hour and a half, it took me nine hours. But there you go.

Brutal.

Brutal. Now one day it was the road to hell. And on that note.

Well, we're back on the road as it were. So in the Highlands of Scotland, a lot of local policemen have been called out over the last few decades to attend either accidents that didn't exist, cars that have vanished, sightings of people. So one hopes these have been recorded, but this is a I think this is a creepy one. Um it's a very short story, but it is quite creepy. So it involved a local police officer whose name has remained unsaid, but was forced to slam on the brakes because of something he saw by the road when he was driving uh in the in the wells of the highlands. So jumping from the car, the officer Wren then ran to investigate while his passenger, unaware of what had transpired, remained inside the car. After some minutes, the driver reappeared looking visibly shaken and told his companion that he thought he had seen someone with what appeared to be serious injuries standing beside the road. Somewhat perturbed by the strange turn of events, they continued their journey, the policeman eventually shrugging off the incident as you know as his imagination. It was noted that a few days after the incident, the officer was shocked to be called back to the very same spot which was now the scene of a fatal car accident. That's a many be true story. It would appear that his terrible vision preempted what was to come. My favourite one, though, however, is from a Mrs. Kirkland whose husband was stationed at a naval base in a place called Alt B. Have you been to Alt B? I have not. I think I've been there years ago. It's in this top of the West Coast, but I can't remember much about it. I'm sure it was very very, very pretty, but it was Alt B. This was in 1945, you know, so it's going back. It's a wee bit of a vintage tale. So she recounted her story in in a newspaper 47 years after the incident. She described returning home from Christmas leave, driven by a local uh and his name was Roddy McKenzie. So there's the woman and her husband coming back from Alp B 945, driven by Roddy McKenzie, and they're heading now towards Inverness when they witnessed a black vehicle with lights on at full beam speeding towards them on the approaching road. And as the road was only single track, there was a bit of uh sort of anxiousness because the other car didn't seem to be slowing down. So they did. They stopped and waited for the approaching car to pass. But after waiting for what appeared to be an interminable age, they eventually crept forward to find out what was going, because was we dipping the road and they assumed the car had gone into that dip in the road. But when they got to the open part again, it was gone. It was definitely gone. And they'd seen it quite plainly, multiple witnesses together. So in more recent times, uh in the nineties, another similar event. This time two locals, Ian Morrison and John McDermott, saw a ghost scarf was travelling through Glen Dryer. I think that's how it's pronounced. And it was around three am in the morning, and as in previously characters, the area offered no means of hiding, and once again the twin headlights were reported heading towards them at speed. And during the doing the decent thing, they waited for it to pass, but their view was blocked momentarily by a roadside garage, and again as they got past the garage, it had gone. Why is this going on? It's bizarre. Very stressful. Cars don't have spirits. Well maybe they do, but do they Oh, I don't think they do.

Well, I don't know. I don't know. That's something that always has I've always questioned objects that are haunted. Why are they haunting? Yeah.

This is very peculiar. Can I finish with one more? This phantom car story involved a whole family who witnessed it and they were travelling from Glasgow to visit uh their grandmother in Argy, and the witness described how they undertook the journey around four times a year, so they know that you know they knew the road pretty well. But on this occasion they were accompanied by the pets the cat and the dog. Part way through the journey, they had not long passed Fort William when the witness, who was now dozing, was rudely awakened by the sound of their Jack Russell growling. So startled, she looked from the window where she saw what she described as a lovely old car with lights on passing by and at the same time the temperature within their own vehicle plunged to near freezing, and quickly glancing back, she noticed that the road was now empty. By which point the dog stopped growling, curled up, and fell back to sleep.

Oh my god.

But there you go. So yeah, it's uh it's an area, um there seems to be no lack of stories, and they all follow a pretty similar trajectory, so it leaves one wondering.

It does, doesn't it?

I love those ones. I really do. Hopefully we'll get more next time. Are we gonna be doing we're gonna be doing part two, I'm thinking, at some point sooner? There's more to come. There's more to come. We do like a bit of haunted road stuff.

If you've got any stories yourself, go on to our website, fill in the form, let us know.

We'd love to hear from them. Anyway, everyone, have a pleasant evening, and thank you very much for joining us on our latest lights on Stoll Scared. Stay tuned for more exciting updates soon. Good night from Graham.

Good night from Karen.

I keep the hallway light on, but the shadows never fade. Every corner whispers secret so the choices that I made. There's a tapping at the window, though the wind is tending still, and a chill runs down my spine like something moving at its will. I tell myself it's nothing, just a clean of the floor, and everything feels like that.