Road ghosts - Are these haunting spirits to blame for car accidents?

For centuries tales have been told of the ghosts that haunt Britain’s roads. A tragic history of death and murder and the lost spirits trying to find their way home.

So-called road ghosts have caused of a number of car accidents on country lanes throughout the country and over the years have inspired tales in the press of phantom hitch-hikers, bridesmaids, soldiers and even animals.

Most cases have involved lone motorists travelling late at night, navigating their way along country lanes in poor weather conditions when suddenly a figure appears in front of them. But just as the driver believes they’re about to feel an impact, nothing happens and when they get out of the car to check if the person is ok, they are unable to find a body.

One couple from Hampshire had such an experience in 1976 and were lucky to avoid sustaining serious personal injuries in a possible road accident. A woman driving though foggy Hulbert Road in Waterlooville was forced to put her foot on the brake after her husband saw a young girl appear in front of the vehicle. He called out to his wife to stop and closed his eyes at the inevitable impact but nothing happed. There was no loud thud, no damage to the car; the girl had just disappeared.

The man discussed the incident with friends and work colleagues and was told that other people had claimed seeing a girl in the same spot. The girl allegedly came from a housing estate called Leigh Park and had been killed as she tried to hitch-hike her way home from Waterlooville.

He also heard a similar story from somebody who had been stopped by a girl on the same stretch of road. The man said it had been raining that evening and was giving the young girl a lift back to her home in Leigh Park. When he arrived at the address, he found the girl had vanished from her seat, leaving only a wet imprint as evidence that she had been in the vehicle.

Bad weather appears to be a running theme throughout many road ghosts encounters and motorists travelling on the A38 Willand to Taunton Road have repeatedly stumbled across a grey-haired man waving a torch in foul weather conditions. In 1958 a long distance lorry driver claimed he met the man on three separate occasions and had given him a lift home. He said the man had a cream mackintosh and was always discussing the car accidents that had taken place along the stretch of road from the Blackbird Inn along the A38 to Beam Bridge.

On the last occasion the man asked the lorry driver to wait for him at the usual dropping off point at the bridge while he collected some cases to drop off further down the road. After waiting 25 minutes for the man to reappear, the driver decided to continue on with his journey.

Three miles down the road he was stunned to see the grey-haired man waving a torch and shaking his fist at him, there was no possible way he could have walked the three miles in such a short time. He tried to drive past the man but he jumped out in front of the vehicle. When the driver got out of his car the man was standing in the road again. There had been no impact and he hadn’t been hurt. The driver then recalls the man turning his back to him and vanishing.

A similar road accident claim was made years later in 1991 when a female driver came across a man waving a bright torch along the A38, causing her to crash her car into a ditch. When she got out of the vehicle to have a word with the man, there was nobody there.

Some motorists have claimed feeling an impact as they hit an apparent ghost with their vehicle. Coach driver Ian Sharp’s account of a ghost sighting on the A229 as he drove home one evening grabbed the media’s attention with headlines such as, ‘Bridesmaid ghost haunts highway where she died’ (The National Enquirer, 15th December 1992).

The 54-year-old claimed a woman suddenly appeared in front of his car and ran towards him, looking him straight in the eye just seconds before falling underneath the vehicle’s bonnet. As he felt an impact he slammed on the brakes and jumped out to see if the woman was ok but failed to see any sign of her anywhere.

He told reporters, “I honestly thought I had killed her. You can imagine how it felt. I was so scared to look underneath, but I knelt down and looked straight through - there was nothing there.”

The site where Ian Sharp saw the woman’s ghost has been plagued by a number of sightings over the years and locals believe he drove into the ghost of a young bridesmaid tragically killed in a serious road accident in 1965 in Blue Bell Hill.

The A229 running through Blue Bell Hill was listed in recent years to be the most likely place to encounter a road ghost. The list of Britain’s most haunted roads also included the A616 in South Yorkshire, the A75 in Dumfriesshire and the A361 in Somerset.

Sightings have never been caught on video or captured in photographs but people still believe in the unexplained tales of road ghosts haunting our country lanes.

It could be possible that these spirits were killed at the scene of such sightings and are trying to finish their last journey home. The fact that similar tales have been told so many years apart tells us there is a supernatural phenomenon about the tales and we can only imagine that such sightings could be blamed for further unfortunate car accidents in the future.