Travelling an empty road in the dead of night can be an eerie experience,
especially if the road travelled is off the beaten path. One would be hard pushed to imagine a more
chilling scenario than being faced with a spectre looming out of the night on a quiet, unlit road.
Whether they be major city roads or country lanes steeped in darkness, there are many chilling
stories surrounding England’s highways. I bring you four such stories spanning over 150 years.
This story was originally told to author G.F Munford and featured in his 1921 book
Ghosts and Legends of South Somerset. The book was, by the author’s own admission,
a vague account of tales from the area, told to him as a young man in the late
19th Century, and retold to the best of his ability some 40 years later.
This is an 1870 account from a local man, who swore the story is true, no matter how
unbelievable it may sound. He explained that in late November of 1851 we travelled on foot from
the village of Stoke-sub-Hamdon to the town of Crewkerne, where he was staying at the time.
He explained that the rain fell in sheets that night, and the wind was violent and
threw everything around him into confusion. He said that “The darkness put on its
blackest mantle to be in dreary conformity with its colleagues, the wind and rain”
He was in a hurry to escape the weather, so scrambled along the empty, dark country roads,
through ever deepening water. After walking for what he believed to be three or four miles,
he said he arrived at a road midway between West Chinnock and Crewkerne,
a road he referred to as “Sandy Road”.
He explained that it dipped into a small valley, and as he approached the lowest point,
he described how the darkness suddenly became less intense as the rain pooled
around his ankles. He said “it was then that I became conscience that I was not alone,
for immediately in front of me appeared to be a woman seated in the middle of the road”.
It was a young woman in her night dress. Her long dark hair hung over her naked shoulders,
and the expression of her on her face, he explained,
was “the wildest and most vacant I ever saw or ever wish to see again”.
At this point he states that he did not believe in ghosts and thought that the woman,
being so far away from human inhabitation was insane and had escaped from her confinement.
Summoning all of his courage, he approached her, not knowing what he was going to say
as he drew closer. He then slowly circled her as she sat in the road,
calmly combing her hair, apparently unaffected by the wind and rain.
With a sudden realisation that he was in the company of something otherworldly,
he said that the blood tingled through his veins.
Quickly making his was past her, he ran up the road until he was well clear of
the apparition. He stopped part way and turned to look back. She was still there,
sat with her back to him, oblivious to the storm that blew around her.
For a moment he thought he could hear a woman’s
voice carried on the wind which said “Oh, why does he not come?”
As he continued on his way, the darkness became intense once again, and for the rest of his
journey, as he waded through the rain and mud, he replayed the event over in his mind, wondering if
it was a figment of his imagination, brought on by the stress and fatigue of his journey.
He says that he kept his experience to himself for a long time for fear of being called a liar,
but some years later, eventually re-told it to an old friend one day as they walked that same road.
After he had described to his friend what he had witnessed that night and pointed out the exact
spot that he had seen the apparition, his friend explained a bit about the history of the area,
saying that the field next to the road was once called “Nell Clifford’s Lake” because of
an incident that occurred there in the latter part of the 18th century, the exact year being unknown.
It’s a long story, but I’ll try to retell it now
with enough detail to give you a clear picture of what allegedly transpired.
A successful farmer by the name of Abraham Clifford once owned
the surrounding land and lived in a farmhouse which no longer stands. His
daughter’s name was Ellen Clifford or Nell, as her parents called her.
She was an attractive young woman with many admirers,
but only one of them interested her. It was a man by the name of Harry Gill,
and the pair were due to be married on Christmas day of that year.
Their arrangement was known by all, including a man who would remain anonymous in the story
because there were still many people living in the area with the same surname, and for fear
of offending people after the publication of his book, the author decided to leave it out.
He was described as an ill-bred fellow and not at all good enough
for young Nell. It’s said that this man, a long time admirer of Nell Clifford,
was overheard saying that he would break the skull of Harry Gill before he could marry her.
A month before Harry Gill and Nell Clifford were to be married, Harry was thrown from his horse
one night and killed. When his body was found, there were signs of severe wounds to his head,
not consistent with those typically caused by being thrown from a horse, and many people
in the area suspected foul-play. But with no proof of this, the death was ruled accidental.
Gill’s death was reported to the Clifford household, and with a heavy heart it was
Nell’s father’s duty to tell his daughter of her loss. But as he approached her and saw the
look of expectation in her eyes, he wasn’t able to break the news and instead told her that Harry had
been badly injured in a riding accident. He then told her that he would make further enquiries.
Later that day Harry Gill’s unnamed rival visited Nell’s home and gloated to the family that Harry
Gill had been killed the night before, leaving Nell without a future husband.
In a frenzy of anger and overwhelming sadness Nell fell into a catatonic state. When she
came to she was in denial, telling her family that Harry was alive and was on
his way to see her. As the hours, turned to days, and Nell’s lover didn’t show,
she began to accept his fate and fell into a deep depression.
Christmas day, the day of the planned wedding soon came around. It was a dismal rainy day,
and as the evening rolled in, so did the storm clouds.
On hearing the wind and the rain, Nell told her parents that Harry had arrived,
because she could hear him approaching the farm on horseback. Her parents put up
the usual façade, playing along with their daughter’s desperate fantasy.
When the family went to bed that night, Nell left the farmhouse. Some say that
she went to meet Harry Gill, whom she has convinced herself was on his way.
The next day, unaware that she had left the premises the night before,
her parents desperately searched the grounds for their daughter. Then it occurred to her
father that Nell may have taken to the road Harry would have rode down to meet her.
Abraham Clifford and his wife set out to the location to find their daughter
face-down in the muddy rain water at the lowest point of Sandy Road.
The surrounding fields and much of the road had been submerged.
Some say she had taken her own life, while others said she was too timid a soul to do so,
and was simply overcome by the elements and feelings of grief and passed out into the rain
water. She was wearing a white nightdress, and still held in her hand was a hair comb.
After this story was first published in local newspaper Pulman’s Weekly News in
December of 1870, the author received a letter from a reader who claims to have
seen the apparition of a woman in a white gown on the corner of a road in the area.
It wasn’t the same location as described in our story, but it was less than a mile away.
I should mention that today, at least, there is no Sandy Road in the area. But there is
a road called Sandy Hole. It lies north of Crewkerne in the village of Merriott,
and is in fact, as the original story-teller mentioned, between West Chinnock and Crewkerne,
which is the route he claims to have taken.
It isn’t the fastest natural route today, and probably wouldn’t have been in 1851
even though roads weren’t as abundant. But in the dead of night, and going by nothing
more than his own instincts during a storm, it would have been easy to navigate off course.
I paid a visit to Sandy Hole, and as described in the story, the road dips deeply and it’s
easy to see how the area would be prone to flooding. The story-teller also said that he
had travelled three to four miles at the point he met the apparition. If the story is true,
this would have been accurate. There is exactly four miles between Stoke-sub-Hamdon,
the point at which he began his journey, and the Sandy Hole road.
I can’t find any sources that say Sandy Hole was once called Sandy Road, but according to this map,
dated 1841, the general area around the road appears to have been called Sandy Hole,
as opposed to the road itself. But in this reconstructed map dated as the late 19th
century, the name of the road was in fact Sandy Hole, as it is today.
It’s possible that the either the author or the story-teller got the road name wrong. This
confusion over road’s name puts the story’s credibility into question, especially as
both the man were local, because you’d expect their knowledge of the area to be better.
Going back as far as the 1841 census, I could not trace the Clifford family name
to the village. But that doesn’t mean the family were never there,
as these events are said to have unfolded in the late 18th century, at least 40 years
prior to the census. I did, however, trace the name back to the county and surrounding area
as far back as the mid 19th century. But with old stories dating back many
generations like this one, it’s hard to say for sure if the accounts are true,
wrongly remembered, altered over time or complete fiction.
This next encounter happened in the village of Blackawton in the county of Devon. On Wednesday
January 6th, 1909 an inquest was held into the sudden death of 64 year old Mary Jane Buckingham,
who was found deceased in her bed on the morning of Monday January 4th.
English newspaper the Western Times reported that Mrs. Buckingham had told friends that on the
previous Friday she had seen an apparition in the middle of the road close her home in Blackawton.
She explained to them that she approached what she thought to be a female apparition and then spoke
to her. Giving no response or acknowledgment, the ghostly figure then faded away.
At the inquest a Dr. JH Harris concluded that Mrs. Buckingham’s death was due to heart disease,
and he made no reference to the mysterious encounter.
It was the evening of Friday October 12th 1979 when 26-year-old Roy Fulton drove
home from a darts match which he had attended in Leighton Buzzard, in the county of Bedfordshire.
When Mr. Fulton spoke to author Michael Goss about his experience in 1980,
he recalled the time as being around 9:20pm when drove a road called Peddars Lane in the village
of Stanbridge. As Peddars Lane joins Station Road there were no street lights at the time,
and this is where Fulton recalls seeing a figure of a man stood on
the left hand side of the road. He drove ahead of the stranger and then stopped,
so he could see him approaching from behind with the aid of his rear lights.
When the stranger arrived at Fulton’s van,
he let himself in. He was described as being pale with a long face with
dark curly hair. He wore a dark jumper, a white shirt beneath it and dark trousers.
Fulton asked the him where he was heading. The man didn’t speak and simply pointed
straight ahead. Although he thought this unusual behaviour, Fulton considered that
the man may have been mute, so he made no attempt at conversation and drove on.
Fulton assumed the man was either going to nearby Dunstable or Tottenhoe,
so he just drove on in that direction. Fulton recalled that 5 or 6 minutes into the journey he
turned to his passenger to offer him a cigarette. To his horror the passenger seat was empty. He
slammed on his brakes and swung around to check the back. Nothing. The stranger had disappeared.
After a few moments, and reluctantly accepting the situation, Fulton drove
on and stopped at a nearby pub, ordered a large scotch and relayed his experience to
the landlord and disbelieving bar patrons, before heading to Dunstable police station
where he reported the incident, and asked if there were any similar incidents on record.
Police told him that it was the first they had heard of a phantom hitch-hiker. Fulton’s story,
according to an Inspector Rowland, raised a few eyebrows at the station,
but he admits they did send a car to investigate the scene.
On October 18th 1979 the story appeared in the Dustable Gazette, under the title ‘Night Ride
Riddle’, but it wasn’t Fulton who had contacted the paper. The story had found its way to Roy
Fulton’s friend’s wife, and then passed on to Mrs. Anne Court, who was a local news
reporter for the Dunstable Gazette. Her story appeared on Thursday October 18th edition,
and the following day she was contacted by the Sunday Express reporter Sally Staples,
who made the story national news when she relayed the story a few days later.
No one ever contacted either paper to report
any similar experiences and the story remained a one-off event.
Author Michael Goss in his 1984 book The Evidence for Phantom Hitch-hikers questioned Fulton’s
sobriety, pointing to the fact that he had been drinking that night. But during a tape recorded
interview conducted by Goss in 1980, Roy Fulton explained that he had consumed a small amount of
alcohol that evening because he was driving. He also mentioned that his profession as a carpet
layer relied on him having a driving license and that he wasn’t prepared to gamble his livelihood.
When further pressed on what he had witnessed, and asked to be more precise, Fulton said to Goss:
“The interior light came on. I remember that… I saw him as clearly as I can see you”.
On the evening of December 11th 2002, drivers witnessed a car lose control and swerve off
the southbound carriageway of the A3 road at Burpham in Surrey. Details of what was actually
that night reported are scarce, but after the individuals who witnessed the scene reported it,
police made a search of the area and found no vehicle and no signs that a crash had taken place.
Then on December 13th a second search was made. That’s when police found a maroon
coloured Vauxhall Astra lying nose-down 20 yards from the busy road. The car
was covered by vegetation and on further investigation a grim discovery was made.
The decomposing, partially skeletal remains of a person was found a short distance from
the car. The deceased driver had clearly tried to climb the steep bank of the A3
to seek help, but was unable to make it before dying from their injuries.
Through dental records, the body was found to be 21-year-old Christopher Chandler from Isleworth in
West London. He had last been seen in Hounslow, West London the previous July before he became
a hunted man after carrying out a robbery. At the time of his death he was on the run from London’s
Metropolitan police, but was never apprehended and subsequently reported missing by his brother.
His phone records showed a final attempted call to his brother, lasting for less than a second,
but it’s unknown if the call was made before or after the crash.
Coroner, Dr Karin Chandler, no relation to the deceased,
said that it was likely that Mr Chandler had died because of the crash,
but there was no proof, and the cause of death was left as an open verdict.
Could it be possible that the people who witnessed the headlights of a car
veering off the road at that precise location in December of 2002 witnessed
a ghostly reply of what had been Christopher Chandler’s last moments five months earlier?