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Psychic Mike Brooker stands above M6

Britain’s Most Haunted Roads



According to a recent survey, 34 percent of Brits believe in the paranormal and sightings of strange “beings” are on the increase, particularly on the highways and byways of England and Scotland. Following are a list of road hazards that could make you swerve, especially late at night ... or when there’s a thick fog, a full moon or it’s close to Halloween:



Ghosts Galore (M6 between Crewe and Knutsford, Cheshire). Motorists have reported numerous strange phenomena between Junctions 16 and 19, including phantom vehicles, spectral hitchhikers, someone riding an old-fashioned bicycle and Roman legionnaires marching across the road. Psychic Mike Brooker of Northwich, who has dubbed the stretch of road “Cheshire’s Bermuda Triangle,” suspects the disturbance resulting from a £250 million upgrade project could have awakened the 2,000-year-old spirits from a Roman burial ground. “I personally know people who have lost their lives and families who have been affected by accidents on this stretch of motorway,” he told CheshireLive. “I am leaning towards the theory that it can be connected to Saxon involvement. There are reports of a Roman burial ground and that there was an historic clash between Scottish and English armies. There are so many variables and possibilities.”



Recently a Wirral resident reported a “freaky experience” on the M6. “I was driving on the M6, around junction 17, when I thought I saw a figure ahead,” he said. “I immediately slowed down. I could see that this ‘person’ was in the middle lane. To me, it looked like the figure had run across the lanes and was now waiting for me as if they were suicidal. But as I got closer, the figure didn’t look like a solid figure. It looked almost translucent. And then the figure just vanished. There was nothing there. I literally blinked and it had gone,” the driver continued. “I checked my mirrors and there was nothing behind me. I don’t logically believe in ghosts and the supernatural. For now I’m telling myself that my brain was playing tricks on me. But my brain was suitably convinced that something was amiss that I slammed on the brakes and swerved to avoid hitting whatever was in my way.”



‘Hairy Hands’ (B3212, Dartmoor, Devonshire). Strange things have been reported along this stretch of road since the early 1900s. Travelers between Postbridge and Two Bridges have claimed to inexplicably lose control of their vehicles or have their steering wheels mysteriously lock. But locked wheels and losing control of one’s motorcar are nothing in comparison to the pair of “hairy hands” some insist they have seen on their windows and wheels. In 1962, Florence Warwick was driving the route when she pulled over to consult a map when she suddenly shivered and felt someone was watching her. “I looked up and saw a pair of huge, hairy hands pressed against the windscreen,” she recalled. “I tried to scream, but couldn’t. I was frozen with fear.”



A more recent account took place in 2008. Michael Anthony was returning from Postbridge one night around 11 o’clock when he, like Florence Warwick, had a strange feeling. His hands became numb and he was afraid he was having a stroke. Then he saw them: a pair of disembodied “paws” were attempting to force him off the road. He was struggling for control of the wheel when the lights of a passing vehicle illuminated the abomination and the spectral hands vanished. Badly shaken, he later remembered a strong smell of sulphur filled the car.



A Dead Bride and Vanishing Hitchhiker (A229, Sussex to Kent). This major north-south stretch of highway is a contender for Britain’s most haunted road. The local constabulary receives numerous calls from drivers who believe they’ve hit someone, but when checked, there’s no injured person or corpse to be found. The reports began when Maurice Goodenough, a 35-year-old bricklayer, frantically entered the Rochester Police Station claiming he’d just knocked down a young woman. “The girl just walked out in front of me from the edge of the road. My car hit her with one hell of a bang,” he insisted. Yet police and tracking dogs found no evidence of a victim. The same thing happened in 1992 when Ian Sharpe, a 54-year-old bus driver Ian Sharpe made a similar report. According to Police Constable Roger Ginn’s summary: “Once we were satisfied there was no sign of an accident, no damage to his car and particularly in view of where it had occurred, we just had to write it off as another sighting of the Blue Bell Hill ghost.” The apparition haunting Blue Bell Hill is almost certainly the spirit of Judith Langham, a 22-year-old bride-to-be who was tragically killed at the location on November 19, 1965, the night before her wedding. Some drivers have claimed to actually pick up the young woman only to have her vanish from their cars.



The A229 also has a phantom male hitchhiker. Drivers pick up a man who commences telling them of things that have gone wrong in the world which he intends to correct. While they are pondering his remarks, their passenger simply disappears.



Ghost of Gracious Lane (A21, South London). Though it doesn’t appear particularly spooky, the A21 is haunted nonetheless. While driving in the area where the new dual carriageway meets the Old Gracious Lane, many motorists have reported the road ahead disappears and a nonexistent route leads to the right. Some say it’s the no longer extant Gracious Lane that somehow reappears. Drivers also have reported seeing the specter of an elderly, white-haired lady wearing a fawn coat along the roadside.



Phantom Motorcycle Hitchhiker (A6, Stockport near Mersey Square, Greater Manchester). For years the A6, which runs between Manchester and Buxton, has been the haunt of a phantom female hitchhiker, who thumbs a lift from passing motorcycles before vanishing into thin air. Harold Smith recalled his run-in with the unusual spirit in the early 1990s. “As I came down the long hill, I saw a figure on the left-hand pavement,” he remembered. “She was slim with dark, straight shoulder-length hair, wearing a short jacket and trousers and holding a helmet. As I approached, she walked to the curb and stuck her thumb out. People don’t usually thumb lifts from motorcyclists,” he continued. “When I stopped in the lay-by (parking lane) and looked back over my shoulder, I couldn’t see her anymore. I waited, revved the engine, but gave up and rode home. The whole thing was very strange.”



Black Shuck* (King’s Lynn A149, Norfolk). One fateful day in 2000, college lecturer Simon Corbin, driving from Hunstanton, saw what he believes was Black Shuck, a giant black dog with glowing red eyes said to haunt parts of the region. Sightings of the horrifying specter have been reported for centuries and the Black Dog of Norfolk is believed to have been the inspiration for the demon dog in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles. “I believe I saw the ghost dog while I was doing my teacher training in Norfolk, in the year 2000 – shortly before I joined Kingston College,” Corbin, who is based in Kingston, Surrey, reported. The college’s official website even mentions the incident: “Simon, then living in King’s Lynn and working in Hunstanton, was driving on the A149 on a bright summer’s day when he saw a large black dog racing across the carriageway. In true ghostly fashion, the creature appeared from and vanished into thin air.”



Spectral Soldier (A696 near Belsay, Northumberland). In August 2015, Rob Davies and Chris Felton, radio disc jockeys based in Gateshead, encountered a ghost in an RAF uniform on this remote rural road. “We saw a man standing at the side of the road,” Davies explained. “We both actually jumped at first because we didn’t see him until very late. He was dressed in a beige color from head to toe. He was sticking his arm out for a lift, but we could not stop in time ... We turned around and I started filming on my iPhone as it seemed a bit odd,” he continued. “We couldn’t remember how far back he was, but we saw him again and slowed. He was dressed in what I can only describe as RAF gear and was holding something under his arm, which looked like a helmet or some kind of bag. It was only seconds and no other car had been past, but when we turned around, he was gone.”



Phantom Car (Loch Awe Road, A646, Argyll and Bute, Scotland). Len and Mandy Ross recently reported their encounter with a “ghost car” that terrifies motorists along the highway. “We were on our way to Oban to get some supplies when we saw a car coming towards us,” they reported. “We took our eyes off for five seconds ... but nothing went past.”





Hags, Phantoms and Unearthly Creatures (A75 [above], Kinmount Straight, Scotland). Dubbed the most haunted road in Scotland and widely-known as “The Ghost Road,” this location has been a hotspot for supernatural activity for centuries. Among the many entities reported are eyeless phantoms peeping out from behind trees and bushes on the side of the road, spectral carriages, ghosts walking along the side of the road and nonexistent “people” who suddenly appear in front of drivers. Some have reported seeing a monk “staring blankly” over the valley and a few have insisted the apparition appeared beside them in their vehicles. According to Kathleen Cronie, a local paranormal investigator, the A75 is haunted by “screaming hags, eyeless phantoms and a menagerie of unearthly creatures.”



The most haunted part of the motorway is the poorly-lit section between Gretna and Annan via Eastriggs, where drivers have reported seeing an elderly man in tweed standing at the old Kinmount bus shelter. There have also been reports of chickens flying toward vehicles, but the fowls vanish before hitting the windshield. One of the more famous sightings occurred in 1962 when Derek and Norman Ferguson witnessed a flying chicken that suddenly dematerialized before contact. The Ferguson men were also plagued by giant cats and a furniture van that disappeared into the ether. On one occasion when a driver called the police station in Deepcar, an officer advised the caller to phone a priest.



Bigfoot (A370, Brockley, Somerset). In May of 2018, a stunned train passenger reported spotting a creature he identified as Bigfoot loitering close to woodland just off the A370. “To my eye whatever it was seemed to take massive strides, and ‘it’ was covering the ground very quickly,” the witness told the British Bigfoot Sighting group. “As I spun my head to the left to see if anybody else on the train had seen what I was looking at, I was surprised to see that nobody was really looking out from the seats in my direction, or any direction other than down, to be fair. In my carriage was probably 10 to 12 people – most of them with their head in either mobile phones or morning newspapers,” he added.



Spectral Car Crash (A3 at Burpham, Surrey). In December 2002, Surrey police investigated reports of a car said to have swerved off the road. Officers eventually located a vehicle in a ditch containing a man’s remains – but the motorist had been dead five months and this led to speculation the sightings were phantom re-enactments of the fatal crash. Sergeant Russ Greenhouse, of the Surrey Police, said: “The car was discovered as a result of a report from members of the public who thought they saw a car’s headlights veering off the road. The officers could not identify that collision, but they had the presence of mind to search on foot,” which led them to the earlier crash.



Werewolf† (B1249, East Riding of Yorkshire). Wolves roamed the forests of what is now the East Riding of Yorkshire until the 15th century, when they were hunted to extinction. But it’s wolves of the supernatural variety that haunt the location – or at least a part of the B1249 – today. Reports from the 1960s describe how a truck driver was terrified by a red-eyed hairy creature that attempted to smash its way through his windshield as he drove along the remote roadway. More than a half-century later in 2016, Jemma Waller, 24, saw a monster she described as “like a big dog, probably bigger than my car, but it had a human face,” in the same location.



Faceless Ghost and Other Phenomena. (A616, Stocksbridge Bypass, Sheffield, South Yorkshire). The bypass was opened in May 1988, linking the M1 at Junction 35A to the Woodhead Pass. It has been described as an “accident black spot” and in recent years, acquired the nickname “Killer Road.” Many believe it is the land on which the highway is constructed, rather than the road itself, that is haunted. According to local legend, a monk who had fallen from grace was buried in an unconsecrated grave and his spirit roams the desolate moorland on either side of the A616. In 1997, a local newspaper published a report by supermarket manager Paul Ford, who encountered the phantom. “From a distance it looked like someone trying to cross the road, but as I got nearer, I could see it was like a man in a long cloak,” he recalled. “Then I realized it had no face and it was just hovering above the road.”



There also were mining concerns in the location at one time and when work began in 1987, reports of strange sounds and other phenomena commenced. Two security guards claimed to have witnessed numerous unexplained paranormal activity while on patrol, including children in old-fashioned clothing dancing near the construction site. Some believe the apparitions were the offspring of old-time miners. There also have been reports of drivers feeling their cars shaking, hearing banging noises on their roofs and the sounds of rattling chains.

Sources: Harvey Gavin, The Express, September 23, 2018; Emily Prince, The Eastern Daily Press, October 15, 2018; Kate Avis-Riordan, Country Living, October 31, 2017; Angela Tempest, "Haunted Devon: Postbridge and the Hairy Hands," Weird World, February 5, 2014; Sophie Kitching, Hull Live, April 11, 2018; Rentalcars.com; and Tristan Cook, BristolLive, May 9, 2018.



*See “Lore and Legend of the Black Dog”: whatliesbeyond.boards.net/thread/1942/lore-legend-black-dog

“Phantom Black Dogs”: whatliesbeyond.boards.net/thread/396/phantom-black-dogs

“Phantom Black Dogs of the British Isles”: whatliesbeyond.boards.net/thread/2560/phantom-black-dogs-british-isles



†See “Dog-Eating ‘Werewolf’ Stalks British Town”: whatliesbeyond.boards.net/thread/5460/eating-werewolf-stalks-british-town

“Werewolf Sighting in East Riding of Yorkshire”: whatliesbeyond.boards.net/thread/5883/werewolf-sighting-east-yorkshire

