site by RobinHoodSEO aka spiney

                          HAUNTED HIGHWAY

 

'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. Then I realised it had no face and it was just hovering above the road.'

Supermarket deputy manager Paul Ford no longer uses a haunted road on the border between South Yorkshire and the Peak District following a terrifying encounter with the unknown. Paul, then aged 28, was driving his wife Jane on a social visit to her sister's home in the steel-making town of Stocksbridge, northwest of Sheffield. The couple were travelling along the Stocksbridge bypass which runs along the hills high above the Don valley, with the town and its steelworks below, when Paul first spotted the figure.

'I just slammed the brakes on and swerved to avoid hitting it, and it was only through Jane grabbing the wheel that we managed to stop the car from crashing.,' said Paul. Jane added: 'If I hadn't have been in the car Paul could have been killed or seriously injured and it left both of us badly shaken up. It was a very frightening experience and I think it might explain why there have been so many accidents on that road.' The pair continued their journey in a  state of shock and were visibly shaking when they arrived at their destination.

The Ford's experience, on New Year's Eve, 1997, was just the latest in a series of eerie sightings on the road, which has developed a reputation for having a jinx.

The bypass was planned as a solution to the growing problem of traffic congestion in Stocksbridge,  taking heavy traffic away from the narrow streets of the steel town. During the construction, the road builders sliced through earth and crags on the hillside north of the town. The ghostly phenomena which have given the £14 million road its reputation began while it was under construction in the autumn of 1987. When the rumour leaked to the press stories soon appeared which claimed the bypass was being haunted by restless spirits from a graveyard which had been disturbed by the construction work.

                                              

The moorland region near Sheffield through which the road was constructed blends into the hills of the High Peak and already had a rich store of folklore which helped the newborn story to take a firm root in the local imagination. A project undertaken by schoolchildren in the steel town uncovered a rich seam of local lore which included stories about the spirits of children killed in a mining accident and a tragedy involving a stagecoach. Most interesting of all was a story concerning a monk who had been buried in unhallowed ground, his resting place having been disturbed by the building of the bypass. Another version turns the monk into a Catholic priest who became lost as he journeyed on foot to take secret mass at an isolated cottage hundreds of years ago. His spirit continues to wander the hillsides. Although there were a number of monastic farms in the area during the middle ages there is no historical record to support any of these legends, and no evidence has ever surfaced to suggest the road-builders had disturbed any grave, unhallowed or not.

When the bypass finally opened on Friday 13 May 1988 no one could have suspected that within a decade fourteen people would have died and hundreds of others would be injured in a series of horrendous accidents on the road, which today carries more than 18,000 vehicles per day. Ten years after its opening a local MP labelled the road an 'accident blackspot' and called for urgent action. Traffic police who patrol the bypass attribute the dreadful accident record to problems associated with many other newly-opened roads. These include motorists driving too fast and inappropriately for the conditions and overtaking on double white lines, hazards exacerbated in some cases by the design of the road itself. Straightforward explanations such as these have done little to prevent the high accident record of the bypass becoming directly associated in the popular imagination with the hauntings which have been reported there and widely publicised in newspapers, books and TV programmes.

The stretch of the A616 (T) where the Fords experienced their 'ghost' is in fact just one of a number of sections of the road and its approaches which have become the scene of strange sightings. While popular belief associates the haunting with the ghost of the monk whose grave was disturbed, there are also reports of a woman in white and a circle of dancing children who have been seen on a number of occasions. Accounts of tiny figures dancing in the moonlight have direct associations with the fairylore found in other parts of the British Isles. In the Emerald Isle the favourite haunts of 'the Gentry' - hills, pathways and special trees - are even today treated with great respect and are rarely disturbed. Stories are still occasionally told about roads which have had to be specially re-routed to avoid fairy hills, and accidents which have befallen those who have broken the taboo by building directly upon a pathway used by the little folk. Could the plans for the modern bypass have disturbed a fairy path across the Peak District hills?

Stories of the haunting by a monk in a long hooded cowl can also be traced back in local lore, many years before the bypass was even on the drawing board. An old lady called Annie Staniforth who earlier this century lived at White Row Farm near the route of the  bypass confided to her daughter that she had seen a ghostly monk on several occasions. Today the idea that the bypass is haunted by a monk has been encouraged by the stories of a number of psychic researchers who have visited the area and claimed their own experiences which have confirmed their belief in the origin of the haunting.

The bypass is in fact one of a number of 'haunted highways' which have been identified by researchers who have studied the urban legends which have replaced more traditional folklore. The ghostly figure who unaccountably vanishes after running directly into the path of a moving car is in fact a story type found at many other locations throughout the world. In some cases it becomes more elaborate with the ghost appearing as a hitch-hiker who is picked up by a motorist and then disappears en route to their destination. Is the story of the spirit which hitches a ride home a folk tale whose source can never be definitively traced, or are there 'real' experiences at the core of the mystery? The fact that the same or a similar story is told with local variations across the world does seem to suggest it should be categorised, as the folklorist Jan Brunvand suggests, as an urban myth.

Here is an example of this type of urban legend collected in the Peak District. Several versions of the tale have appeared in local books and newspapers and the Derbyshire historian Clarence Daniel was convinced the incident really occurred 'a number of years ago.' He wrote that the case was initially reported in a Sheffield newspaper, which was itself followed up with a much-embroidered version  published in a weekly paper in Matlock. Searches of the relevant files have failed to locate them which is puzzling but simply adds to the apocryphal nature of the whole story. Furthermore, I have collected versions of this same account from a number of different people all unconnected with one another who have added additional details or variations. One claimed to know someone who knew the couple who claimed to have had the experience,  making this a classic 'friend of a friend' story.

The tale concerned a young courting couple who were riding in a motorcycle and side car one winter's evening between the Fox House inn near Hathersage. During the journey they pulled over to offer a lift to a girl dressed in motorcycling leathers and a crash helmet who appeared by the side of the road and thumbed a lift. She said nothing other than to give an address in Sheffield. As they reached the boundary of the city, with the girl riding pillion, the driver glanced back only to find to his astonishment that she had vanished. The couple quickly retraced their steps to Fox House but could find no trace of the hitch-hiker. They were so concerned about her welfare that the driver reported the incident to the police, then resumed their journey. Having second thoughts the motorcyclist and his girlfriend decided to call at the address given by the biker. The woman who answered the door burst into tears when they asked if she knew anyone answering the description. After recovering her composure she told them her daughter had been killed in a motorcycling accident on that very stretch of road. The family had attended her funeral just days before the couple turned up at her door. The description of the girl, including the leathers and crash helmet, exactly matched those of the figure who had hitched a ride that cold winter's night.

It has been suggested that road-ghosts such as the hitch-hiker and the Stocksbridge bypass spectre are modern transmutations of the ancient and very human fear of being alone and isolated in dark and umbrageous places on the boundary of one's family or community. This is an age-old anxiety developed effectively in modern horror film genre such as the 1999 film  The Blair Witch Project. In the Stocksbridge case, the hauntings have been reported by many witnesses who have little if any awareness of each other's stories. Collectively they are redolent of the 'spectral jay-walker' story-type which are known from many other localities in the British Isles. Some folklorists have suggested these tales are 'ghostly classics' which have been repeated and retold so many times that they take on a life of their own. Eventually they are passed from one story-teller to another and in the process are transmitted across vast distances. Folklorist Andrew Lang, who became the President of the Society for Psychical Research in 1912, once said that: 'People will unconsciously localise old legends in new places and assign old occurrences or fables to new persons.' This theory presumes that all can be traced to a source which both the teller and his audience believe to be true with the 'evidence' provided by 'a friend of a friend' who can never be identified.

In the Stocksbridge case many of the witnesses are clearly identified and a number are in fact personal acquaintances of the author, who can vouch for their sincerity.  Take for example the following account by Judy Simpson, who at the time of the experience, in July 1990, was driving along the B6088 at the village of Wortley adjacent to the haunted bypass. Her businessman husband David was travelling in the passenger seat and agreed entirely with his wife's description of what she saw approaching the carriageway.

'I just saw this figure bolting or jogging in the middle of the field on the left of the road,' Judy told me. 

'I couldn't actually see an outline or any facial expression and there were no clothes as such, it was just a grey outline of a person. I could see a head and shoulders, with arms and legs flying everywhere. It was just running aimlessly across the field and I thought it was a jogger until I realised that it wasn't actually touching the ground. It was around three feet above it. There is an embankment that comes up to the road and it leapt from the field over the embankment and landed in the middle of the road in front of us. It seemed to hit the car and just vanished. I just screeched to a stop and it just seemed to melt into the car and all of a sudden it was gone. I looked at David and said "What's happened? It's just gone," and we got out and looked around but we could not find any trace of anything. We were both left really shocked and upset and I could not believe what had happened. All I could think was that it must have been a ghost, whatever a ghost is.'

                                                  

Afterwards, the Simpsons called in at a public house in Wortley for a drink to steady their nerves and told several people at the bar what they had seen. They were surprised to find their claim accepted in a matter-of-fact way rather than being greeted with laughter or disbelief as they had anticipated.

Of equal interest is the story of Chapeltown resident Graham Brooke who in the presence of his son Nigel, then aged fourteen, experienced a bizarre phantom on the same stretch of road during the autumn of 1987. The experience occurred while the bypass was still under construction, which may well be significant. Mr Brooke senior had entered the 1988 London Marathon and was training every day with a target to achieve the necessary level of fitness by means of a daily run from his home in the northwest of Sheffield to the church at Wortley, near the by-pass, returning by the same route:

'I could normally complete the run in about thirty minutes but on this occasion my son asked if he could come with me&ldots;We reached the church in about three quarters of an hour but Nigel kept getting the stitch so on the way back I ran on to make time until he caught me up. I was not tired because I was not running at my normal speed and it was dusk at the time but not dark. As we approached a layby coming towards Wortley village I suddenly saw a chap walking with his back towards the oncoming traffic. I looked at this figure and my brain just could not take in what I was seeing. He was dressed in what I would say was eighteenth century costume and wore a dark brown hood with a cape covering his body. He was walking in the ground, not on the level of the road itself and  I just could not make out what I was seeing. Then I looked at him directly and saw his face. He was carrying a bag and it was slithering along the surface of the road. It was a dark coloured bag with a chain on it and Nigel said he could hear the chain rattling on the ground. I just gasped and said "who is this silly person?" and realised my son was seeing him too, and at that moment the hairs on the back of both of our heads just stood on end and we could smell something really musty just like we were standing in an antique shop. I saw him clearly and was looking directly at him, probably no more than fifty yards away from me with his face towards me and his back to the traffic. He was so close I could see that every half-inch down the cape there was a button, it was that clear. It was a long cape, dark brown in colour and very worn, with a "lived in" look about it; it was so real you could have walked up and touched it. He walked straight past us as we stood there amazed in the middle of the road. Then a lorry came with its lights on and he just disappeared.'