Episode 19 Ghostly Hitchhikers Part 2

[00:00:00] - [Speaker 0]
Good evening everyone. My name is Graeme Milne.

[00:00:02] - [Speaker 1]
My name is Karen Swanston.

[00:00:04] - [Speaker 0]
And welcome to Lights On, Still Scared. Today, we follow on from last week with more haunted hitchhiking stories.

[00:00:59] - [Speaker 1]
Oh, they were really spooky the last time. Have we got a few more? Think we have what have got there, Graham?

[00:01:05] - [Speaker 0]
Beauties we have. I've got a couple of crackers. Do you want me to start off today or show you?

[00:01:10] - [Speaker 1]
I can start off. That's no problem at all.

[00:01:13] - [Speaker 0]
You been by the way?

[00:01:14] - [Speaker 1]
Been very well. Thank you.

[00:01:16] - [Speaker 0]
Very good.

[00:01:17] - [Speaker 1]
Pleased that the old Edinburgh fringe has now finished and everything's now back to normal.

[00:01:22] - [Speaker 0]
Yes, indeed. A sigh of relief all round.

[00:01:28] - [Speaker 1]
Okay. Right. So we're off to Caterham, which is in Surrey. Caterham Bypass, which I do know I've occasionally driven down it, which is the A 22.

[00:01:39] - [Speaker 0]
Very good.

[00:01:39] - [Speaker 1]
Has long been associated with one of British strangest roadside apparitions.

[00:01:44] - [Speaker 0]
Okay.

[00:01:47] - [Speaker 1]
Late at night, motorists traveling down the bypass really seen a lone woman standing beside the road or on the verge.

[00:01:54] - [Speaker 0]
Right.

[00:01:55] - [Speaker 1]
Like they do. She may appear to signal for help or simply stare towards approaching traffic. Drivers who stop often describe her clothing as dark or pale colors, but many are struck by one unsettling detail. When they try to look at her face

[00:02:12] - [Speaker 0]
Right.

[00:02:13] - [Speaker 1]
It appears to be blanketed or impossible to focus, so she has no face.

[00:02:19] - [Speaker 0]
Oh. Good.

[00:02:20] - [Speaker 1]
It's just about as bad as the skeleton face.

[00:02:23] - [Speaker 0]
It's not related, are they?

[00:02:25] - [Speaker 1]
You know who that reminds me of? Do you remember Sapphire and Steel?

[00:02:29] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Yeah. Which one at Lumley?

[00:02:31] - [Speaker 1]
Yes. I I remember there was a episode where this man had no face.

[00:02:36] - [Speaker 0]
Right.

[00:02:37] - [Speaker 1]
And he was a photographer, so he was trapping people in photographs. Jess was eerie, and this just sounds just as eerie. So several retellings, the woman either disappears before the driver reaches her or is no longer present when they get out the vehicle. Some witnesses claim she was standing only moments before in full view, making her disappearance difficult to explain.

[00:03:03] - [Speaker 0]
Right.

[00:03:04] - [Speaker 1]
So the legend is also linked to stories of fatal road accidents on or nearby the bypass, although there is no single confirmed historic event that explains every version.

[00:03:15] - [Speaker 0]
Right.

[00:03:16] - [Speaker 1]
As with many phantom hitchhiker legends, different tellings connected the apparitions with different tragedies. So, yeah, yeah, it's not really sure who she is, this faceless lady, yeah, it's a good one. Creepy.

[00:03:31] - [Speaker 0]
The one I'm going to talk about today is an odd one because normally a lot of these stories, I guess one assumes the apparition somehow connected to an accident of some description. This one really isn't, it's it's called the White Wife.

[00:03:47] - [Speaker 1]
White Wife? The

[00:03:48] - [Speaker 0]
White Wife, yeah. And the location is, and I'm gonna probably make a complete mess of this, so forgive me, friends from Shetland, Unst. Unst. Unst. I think it's Unst rather than Unst.

[00:04:01] - [Speaker 0]
I could be wrong, but I'll say Unst. So, basically, Unst is the northernmost inhabited island in the British Isles and the third largest in Shetland and has a population of around 630 people, which is not massive. It's pretty sparsely populated. However, it does boast several places of interest including Muness Castle. Again, I'm probably making a hash of the name.

[00:04:28] - [Speaker 0]
The location, however, as we're talking about now is a place called Watley which is situated around two and a half miles from its largest inhabited settlement which is Baltla Sound, and the area is home to one of the island's most enduring ghost stories, that of the White Wife. This operation has been seen both at the Bridge Of Walkley and its nearby loch. There are also several stories which give differing accounts as to her origin. Because of this, it would be easy to dismiss the story as a local myth but for several very, very good contemporary reports. So according to legend locally, she was either a woman murdered on her way to a place called Ulysound or her mother searching for her lost child, the latter accounts suggesting that she took her life in a nearby loch because she could find her child, a spirit child I'm assuming, and so her spirit is now earthbound, however there's actually very little factual evidence to support either story.

[00:05:27] - [Speaker 0]
This apparition, if it even is real, is just there and people witness it. What is known, however, is that our subsequent appearances have only been witnessed by men and secondly she manifested herself as both a young and older woman.

[00:05:47] - [Speaker 1]
That's unusual.

[00:05:47] - [Speaker 0]
It is unusual. So whichever account is true cannot be proven, however it has appeared in various times. Now here's a wee story for you. Locals Stephen Spence and Alan Hunter were two of the most recent witnesses and their stories appeared in local and national newspaper. Alan is a native of Unst witnessing the woman described as being old and grey when she appeared in his car while driving.

[00:06:11] - [Speaker 0]
Mhmm. Now just literally appeared. He didn't stop to pick her up, she literally just appeared in the passenger seat next to while he's driving, which is very, very alarming. He said, he found out later on that at the same time, more or less, an elderly female relative had just passed away, which is very, very strange.

[00:06:30] - [Speaker 1]
That's very weird.

[00:06:31] - [Speaker 0]
So it makes me think, it his elderly female relative he was seeing or was it the white wife? I really don't know. But when interviewed, he described how the apparition manifested next to him on passing the loch and sat silently next to him as he drove for around a mile south of the Watley Barn. So he literally drove for a mile with a ghost sitting beside him. Oh.

[00:06:54] - [Speaker 0]
He was by his own admission, and this is the bit that strikes me as even more far out, unfazed, clearing that something similar had happened to him before. There was, as he described, a tradition in his family of having second sight or psychic abilities, so to him this wasn't something, you know, as outlandish as one might expect. Anyway, some five years later, another contemporary tout involved a musician called Stephen Spence who in January, late one night, was driving home again to the same area, bought a sound, and partway through the journey, he noticed something out the corner of his eye and later stated that when he looked around, the white wife was sitting in the seat next to him. She was transparent, grey and she smiled he said. I'll never forget that smile.

[00:07:41] - [Speaker 0]
He later said it gave me an almighty scare and as he approached the next bed he mockingly took his eyes off the figure noting that on turning the corner she had gone. For some time afterwards he was apprehensive on drying by the Watley Loch but over time he came to value his encounter and was noted as seeing that on approach he often hoped she would reappear so he could have a wee yarn with her, but she never did. Ironically, Stephen, the witness, had ribbed Alan, the witness, five years previously on finding out what had happened. Isn't that strange?

[00:08:15] - [Speaker 1]
That's very weird.

[00:08:16] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah, so basically before moving on, there's another account down, this was the White Wife but it involved three young witnesses who during the summer of nineteen ninety nine decided to leave their croft where they were staying. They were bunked there and they headed into town to join in the festivities at the tall ships event. On arrival, they found out that only three ships had docked and so somewhat disappointed, decided to head to a local hostelry for a few drinks and after some time they then headed back to the digs which involved a long walk, you know, in the dark countryside. So after some time they headed back, they were in good spirits as we pardon the pun, and soon their eyes grew accustomed to the dark as the last of the street lights faded from view. So now in the countryside, the three came upon a bend on the road and the remains of an old bridge and it was there a shape appeared, prompting one of the men to greet it with a hello as it walked by.

[00:09:10] - [Speaker 0]
Receiving no reply, the three looked back only to find an empty road, and without waiting to speculate that what they had just witnessed, they ran pell mell along the dark road until they reached the next set of lights. It was a builder's yard illuminated by several lights and for several minutes they stood within its glow panting from their exertions and scared. Unwilling, I guess, to step out into the dark once more, which they eventually had to do, They got home safely but often wondered, was it the white wife of Unst that walked by them on the road?

[00:09:40] - [Speaker 1]
Mhmm.

[00:09:40] - [Speaker 0]
Because it was, by their description, a female figure or at So least female these were accounts taken, you know, early two thousands, nineteen nineties. Mhmm. So who knows? But to have a ghost sitting next to a car for a mile, that's that would test your driving skills, I think.

[00:09:58] - [Speaker 1]
It would, wouldn't it? Would, certainly would. Right.

[00:10:05] - [Speaker 0]
Okay. So what have you got for us now?

[00:10:06] - [Speaker 1]
It's quite an old one because it's it's 1918. So not exactly a car.

[00:10:12] - [Speaker 0]
Okay.

[00:10:12] - [Speaker 1]
But anyway, so this is quite an unusual story associated with Lincolnshire in 1918, a time when horse drawn transport was still common along the growing use of motor vehicles.

[00:10:26] - [Speaker 0]
Mhmm.

[00:10:27] - [Speaker 1]
So according to the story, two women were traveling through Lincolnshire on a horse drawn gig when they encountered a weary looking man walking along the road. They stopped and allowed the stranger to ride with them. Nothing about him initially suggested that he was supernatural. He appeared to be an ordinary traveler in need of assistance, or importantly said very little during the journey. Eventually, the gig reached upon an inn.

[00:10:57] - [Speaker 1]
The mysterious passenger left the inn, and the journey appeared to have ended normally. The woman then entered into the inn themselves, and what they found inside transformed an ordinary act of kindness into something extraordinary.

[00:11:10] - [Speaker 0]
Right. Inside

[00:11:13] - [Speaker 1]
the inn was a body of a drowned man. According to the account, the dead man was the same person who wouldn't believe they picked up and just carried in their gig. The implication was chilling. The stranger they had transported along the road had apparently been the apparition of man whose physical body had already been lying dead at their destination.

[00:11:34] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, dear god.

[00:11:35] - [Speaker 1]
So so they've obviously took him Yeah. To where his body was, which is a bit

[00:11:42] - [Speaker 0]
I like stories like that, though. They they are are creepy.

[00:11:46] - [Speaker 1]
They are very creepy. Yeah. I'm not sure if I like that story. I

[00:11:54] - [Speaker 0]
guess it depends what you like, I guess. I've got one here. Now this, I have to say, is not a true story as it were, it is a fictional story, however it is based on the tropes we have just been about And the reason I'm mentioning it is is because it's actually a film. I'm doing a film review now.

[00:12:16] - [Speaker 1]
You're a film? Okay.

[00:12:17] - [Speaker 0]
A review, but one I think anyone interested in Supernatural should watch because it's on YouTube.

[00:12:24] - [Speaker 1]
Oh, okay.

[00:12:25] - [Speaker 0]
We can go in there and have a wee gandas. It was made in 1951 by none other than Orson Welles, famous American actor, and it is called Return to Glenys Call. Have you ever seen that?

[00:12:39] - [Speaker 1]
I don't think I've seen it. I've heard of it though.

[00:12:42] - [Speaker 0]
It is fabulous. In a nutshell, while filming Othello, he took time out and I can't remember if it was a strike or something, something was on but there were a few days where they couldn't film but as they were in Ireland they thought, well, let's just use a wee bit of money, make this spooky story and put it out there. And I think it was nominated for an Oscar. Mhmm. I mean it's a short but it's it's twenty three minute long.

[00:13:07] - [Speaker 0]
So basically in it he picks up Orson Welles playing, it's very meta.

[00:13:12] - [Speaker 1]
Mhmm.

[00:13:12] - [Speaker 0]
Orson Welles playing Orson Welles.

[00:13:14] - [Speaker 1]
Oh yes.

[00:13:15] - [Speaker 0]
Picks up a guy and they have us sort of drive together on the countryside, it's very atmospherically short, black and white, everybody looks well dressed of course in those days Indeed. And every smoking facts, of course. Mhmm. And as they go along, this gentleman tells him a ghost story. It's it's quite creepy.

[00:13:32] - [Speaker 0]
So essentially, he, the gentleman's story involves him picking up a mother and daughter who are called the Campbells and they asked to be dropped off at a place called Gleniscoll, which I think if I remember correctly is something along the lines of, you know, Valley Of no, Glen Of Shadows, that's what it is, Glen Of Shadows. It's a lovely house. They go there, drive some there, then he's invited in for tea and it's quite late, but he thinks, oh, how going? And of course, give him a wee dram and he's a cigarette and he puts his beautifully engraved cigarette case on the mantelpiece and he's quite taken with the young woman, think she's quite taken with him and she kind of says oh must you go and have a nice pleasant hour or so and then he has to shoot away and off he goes. And as he drives at the gate, he literally gets about a 100 yards down the road and realizes he's left his cigarette case on the mantelpiece.

[00:14:28] - [Speaker 0]
So quickly he turns a return and drives back. When he gets back, he notices I was all boarded up.

[00:14:35] - [Speaker 1]
Mhmm. The hammer's

[00:14:35] - [Speaker 0]
on the door. It's dark. There's no sound. Everything's overgrown and forlorn. Very strange situation.

[00:14:42] - [Speaker 0]
So he ends up going home, and if I remember correctly, gets a key from his solicitor because the property is derelict, and he goes there and he lets himself in. And it is derelict. There's nothing there. Campbell's had died some years previously, and furniture had all been taken out and got this empty shadow of a house. And the only thing he can see is his own footprints in the dust.

[00:15:05] - [Speaker 0]
Scurry's upstairs and finds his, cigarette case sitting all alone on the mantelpiece, and then hears the woman's voice laugh and runs from the building. And that's the story he tells to Orson Welles as they're driving along. So Orson Welles is pretty happy to see him leave the car and he puts his collar up around his neck slightly, he's a bit alarmed, he drives off and lo and behold, around the corner come two women, thumbing a lift. So what's he do? He drives off, leaves his two old, poor old biddies lying there in the rain who's shouting after him and off he heads.

[00:15:39] - [Speaker 0]
It's creepy, it's atmospheric, it's got a wonderful score. I'm a big fan of harp music. I do like a bit of harp music and it's just wonderfully evocative of ghost stories. If you ever get the chance, return to Glenyscall. It's kind of similar to what we've been talking about, fictionalized but based on fact, I suspect.

[00:15:57] - [Speaker 0]
So there you go. There you go. What can you do?

[00:16:00] - [Speaker 1]
Indeed. Well, I have typical hitchhiker story actually. It goes back to 1979 and it's Roy Fulton. He was 26 at the time. He was a carpenter from Dunstable.

[00:16:16] - [Speaker 1]
It was in Bedfordshire.

[00:16:17] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah.

[00:16:18] - [Speaker 1]
And on Friday 10/12/1979, after playing at in a dance match at Layton Buzzard, he was driving home in his minivan.

[00:16:27] - [Speaker 0]
Right.

[00:16:28] - [Speaker 1]
At approximately 09:20, while traveling near Sandsbridge in Bedfordshire, he noticed a young man at the side of the road apparently asking for a lift. Fulton stopped, the young man climbed into the passenger seat. He later described him as around 20 years old with a pale, rather elongated face

[00:16:48] - [Speaker 0]
Mhmm.

[00:16:49] - [Speaker 1]
And dark hair. Counts very slightly regarding the precise clothing.

[00:16:53] - [Speaker 0]
Right.

[00:16:53] - [Speaker 1]
But he described an otherwise ordinary looking young man. Nothing about him initially appeared transparent or supernatural, so he just thought he was a young bloke, just squints his glare. Fulton asked the passenger where was he going, and the young man didn't answer. Instead, he reportedly raised a hand and pointed along the

[00:17:12] - [Speaker 0]
As

[00:17:14] - [Speaker 1]
they continued along the road, Fulton decided to offer his passenger a cigarette. He reached for the packet and turned towards the young man. Passenger's seat was empty. There'd be no sound of the door opening, and the vehicle was reportedly traveling at 45 miles per hour. There's no obvious way the passenger could have left the van.

[00:17:38] - [Speaker 1]
So he immediately thought perhaps the young man had somehow moved to the rear of the minivan. So he stopped, switched on the interior lights and searched, and there was no one there. He was completely alone. Crikey. So rather than keeping the experience to himself, he drove to his local pub, the glider in Dunstable.

[00:18:00] - [Speaker 1]
The landlord Billstone and customers reportedly saw him arriving looking pale and frightened, badly shaken. Fulton also reported the incidents of the police, and later research stated the police checked the area and felt that nothing explained the mysterious passenger. The sorest subsequently appeared in the Sunday Express

[00:18:21] - [Speaker 0]
Oh. Very good.

[00:18:22] - [Speaker 1]
On the 10/21/1979, only nine days after the alleged encounter.

[00:18:28] - [Speaker 0]
Mhmm.

[00:18:29] - [Speaker 1]
As I mean, this obviously makes it a little bit more useful than other legends because obviously the police are involved, the press are now involved.

[00:18:36] - [Speaker 0]
Indeed. A 100

[00:18:37] - [Speaker 1]
Researcher Michael Goss interviewed Fulton and later included the case in his 1984 book, The Evidence of Phantom Hitchhikers. Yeah. And he also appeared in 1985 on Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers

[00:18:53] - [Speaker 0]
Mhmm.

[00:18:53] - [Speaker 1]
And publicly recounted his experience. The counts of the investigation note that the central details of his stories remain subsequently the same

[00:19:02] - [Speaker 0]
Mhmm.

[00:19:03] - [Speaker 1]
As he did in 1979. So, yes. So, yeah, that's a that's a weird one.

[00:19:10] - [Speaker 0]
I do like those. I must admit, I do like ones that have you know, that people remember being recorded at the time and as witnesses being seen, not just some story that, you know, has been around forever. If it's been in the papers as well, of course people set themselves up, They don't want to look stupid. No. So, you know, to put yourself forward to do that, you know, unless you're being paid a huge amount of money for the privilege, you're put yourself on the line there.

[00:19:38] - [Speaker 0]
It'll shot down, so good on them. Good story.

[00:19:41] - [Speaker 1]
Good story.

[00:19:43] - [Speaker 0]
I have one here which is from Fife.

[00:19:46] - [Speaker 1]
Fife?

[00:19:47] - [Speaker 0]
So if anybody doesn't know where Fife is, it's over the bridges, the Forth Road Bridge which separates Lothian which is where Edinburgh is, we're sitting today

[00:19:57] - [Speaker 1]
Indeed.

[00:19:57] - [Speaker 0]
To Fife which are known as the Kingdom Of Fife, a place called the Kingswood Hotel in Kinghorn. Now Kinghorn's quite a wee town, I've been in a couple of times I Has

[00:20:08] - [Speaker 1]
that been to Kinghorn?

[00:20:09] - [Speaker 0]
Yes. Quite nice I think.

[00:20:10] - [Speaker 1]
A nice idea.

[00:20:12] - [Speaker 0]
This takes place in 1972. Mhmm. This is a few years ago and it's a kind of hitchhiking story but the ghosts lopes about a wee bit between hitchhiking and not hitchhiking, if you know what I mean, so I'm putting it in anyway. So at the Kingswood Hotel, the manager, mister Wood, described a situation which a customer had experienced which was described as being scary while waiting for the bus outside the hotel. So the ghost that was witnessed was that of a woman and her appearance caused the witness to flee in terror.

[00:20:45] - [Speaker 0]
When he ran back into the pub his face was pure white, shaking and terrified. He was an anonymous witness I might add, however locals described this for some time, but when he left the pub and he wasn't drunk by any stretch of imagination, I think he'd had a drink, he'd left the pub, he was standing waiting for the bus and it was dark so literally all he see was the headlights of the approaching cars coming down the road, and it was pitch black, and then suddenly he feels somebody standing right beside him. And so kind of slightly looking to the side, he feels a sensation of somebody touching him and he finds that a woman is really close to him, in fact so close it's uncomfortable, you know, personal space being invaded. It was well invaded that day because her coat sleeves were touching his coat sleeves and he thought, well, this is a bit strange. He noticed she was wearing a maxi length coat with the hood pulled up over her face so you can actually see her.

[00:21:44] - [Speaker 0]
So he turned to face the traffic and he stood there for a few moments, this is really embarrassing, this woman stun literally touching me, you know. I could've stand there in the dark staring at the so he turned around and he makes small talk as you do and when he did, she'd gone. For so, for some seconds he stared incredulous then realizing she wasn't there bolted back inside. So stories began to revolve revolve around this, you know, this incident and more people come out than would work and this woman, allegedly somebody who died locally was seen by many, many people but not just standing but getting on the buses, the local buses. This is where the hitchhiking bit comes in.

[00:22:26] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, okay. Yeah. So not at the spot but dreadily opposite the spot, In bus one instance around the time, a bus driver welcomed a woman aboard and she climbed up silently up to the top deck and sat there and the conductor and the bus driver having a wee chin wag and then the conductor went up to collect the ticket and lo and behold, she'd gone. Oh. She'd only been there about two seconds or ten seconds in advance.

[00:22:55] - [Speaker 0]
There's absolutely no way they could have escaped, you know, from from the bus in any way. Mhmm. She was also completely solid. It's a strange one. However, 1972 that story, how about the nineteen fifties?

[00:23:08] - [Speaker 0]
Same thing. The woman allegedly supposed to live locally was meant to be the ghost and her sightings at one point so frequent that she was seen in regular occurrence, climbing aboard buses, standing at a bus stop, looking like she was wanting to hitch. She's been described as downtrodden with a bowed head, dressed in damp somber looking clothes. Tom Appleton, a former resident, was one such witness. He described her bowed form being seen boarding several buses and always heading upstairs and when the conductor went to collect the money, always gone.

[00:23:45] - [Speaker 0]
Antoinette Blanchard, another resident, recounted how her father's friend would often use the road in the evening and on one occasion as he approached the corner where the hotel suite he saw a grey figure standing in the middle of the road and afraid she'd be struck and wondered what in earth she was doing there he slammed on the brakes making the car skid to a halt. And he jumped from the car, and she'd simply vanished. Yet another local resident said exactly the same story, or more or less, that a friend of the family driving on the road screeched on the brakes as this something figure of a woman appeared. So also, bizarrely enough, in the hotel, the gray lady as she's known as, same figure apparently, The owners of his 2022, not that long ago, she stated they've been asked if they had seen anything out of the ornery, and they said, no. We we we haven't, but one guest did claim on the Facebook page in 2005, just before their time of course, they had a very bizarre encounter within the hotel when he claims he's walking in the middle of the night suspended by his ankles above the bed and then dropped.

[00:24:53] - [Speaker 0]
He stated it was the most terrifying experience of life and he'd never forgotten it. You went on to see it was most definitely not a dream and when he spoke to the manager owner at the time and recounted a story, they claimed it must have been an encounter with the resident ghost, which according to them occasionally makes appearances in front of male guests. Mhmm. So this ghost is in their hotel pulling people out of their beds Yep. Getting on the old number whatever 29 bus Yep.

[00:25:19] - [Speaker 0]
And hitchhiking.

[00:25:20] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. So basically she is like getting free room.

[00:25:24] - [Speaker 0]
And bored.

[00:25:25] - [Speaker 1]
And bored.

[00:25:25] - [Speaker 0]
Well, she's not bored, she's quite excited I'm sure. All those travel.

[00:25:30] - [Speaker 1]
And getting yeah. Or getting on

[00:25:31] - [Speaker 0]
a travel. That's in her age. Mean, she's over 60, that's fair enough but who knows? But the thing is two accounts stay, one stay young, one stays old.

[00:25:41] - [Speaker 1]
So

[00:25:43] - [Speaker 0]
is it the same spirit able to manifest at different ages? Two ghosts.

[00:25:50] - [Speaker 1]
Could well be, couldn't it?

[00:25:51] - [Speaker 0]
But the whole somber clothes and the long coat thing would suggest and the, you know, the antiquated look would suggest somebody Is this yeah. From the fifties? Yeah.

[00:25:59] - [Speaker 1]
Creepy. Very creepy.

[00:26:03] - [Speaker 0]
Anyway, that's Kinghorn.

[00:26:06] - [Speaker 1]
We hope you enjoyed those stories. Stay with us for next week for even more. In the meantime, keep the lights on. Still scared?