The Paranormal

Danger on the Roads

Some years ago an old local, asked about Lord Rokeby, the headless horseman, whose four panting horses breathe fire as they race along Stone Street, near Postling crossroads, was quite frank. 'No, I can't say I every seed 'im - and dunnosiwanto,' he said. 'Reckon I'd run away. I knewed a man what did see 'im an' it gran' nigh druv 'im off'n 'is 'ead!' Not surprisingly, perhaps.

And there is more than Lord Rokely on the roads in Kent. There have been constant reports of ghostly activity on the county's highways and byways. There are phantom coaches and headless horsemen at Rainham, Pluckley, Grafty Green, Sissinghurst, Oxney, Eastwell Park and other places, too.

Yet nowadays the phantom coachmen and the ghostly highwaymen of the past are almost a kind of quaintly acceptable fancy dress parade. Most of them have not been seen for years. The fact is that we are more disconcerted by modern-day apparitions and other inexplicable supernatural happenings along our highways. They are less easy to laugh off, more difficult to explain away so glibly. The roads of today carry so many mysteries associated with the recent past. Where once there were coaches and highwaymen, we now have motor cars and motor car victims. It is in our encounters with these that we have to confront our beliefs and doubts.

There are so many curious occurrences involving cars. What about the driver, who at Bewl Bridge in 1997 saw the headlights of a car coming down the hill in her direction? She slowed down to give the oncoming vehicle room to pass. But there was nothing save the sound of the engine which passed her. And when it did so, her audio cassette jumped out of the player. Of course, there might have been a rational explanation. The approaching car might have turned off before reaching her. But the driver swore she heard the car engine as it passed by, and equally mysteriously there was the odd mechanical response. And odd mechanical responses are not rare. On the difficult bend of Elchin Hill at Elmstead, brakes have failed and steering has refused to respond on several occasions. This is not the only location for such an unusual experience.

What causes engine, steering or brake failure? The answer in many instances is bad maintenance or poor driving. Yet this cannot totally account for the curious loss of power experienced by some motorists at particular spots over the years. Take that stretch of road near the crossing of the A253 from Ramsgate to Canterbury and the A256 going south from Margate. At this point there have been several serious motor accidents. In 1922 an accident here in which two women drivers were killed made front page news. At the inquest witnesses said the despite good visibility both cars seemed unable to stop. Examination of the cars revealed no mechanical faults and nothing to explain what had occurred.

On another occasion, in 1936, at these same crossroads a constable on point duty signalled an approaching motor cyclist to slow down as he came to the junction. But the motor cycle continued without reducing speed. Just before he collided with the policeman the cyclist was heard to call out that he could not stop. Fortunately, neither the policeman nor the motor cyclist was badly hurt. There was nothing to explain the cyclist's inability to control his machine, nothing to say way he had been unable to brake or steer away from the constable.

The above are two of several such accidents at this road junction. That there should b accidents is hardly surprising: it is their nature which is so remarkable. It is astonishing to discover that most of the cars involved in such accidents have been found, on inspection, to be poorly maintained and to have no readily identifiable mechanical fault.

Some students of the paranormal have attributed the numerous accidents on this part of the road to long past events. At times a glowing light has been seen going along the road, crossing by the junction and then transforming itself into a robed shape, but there is no explanation of whom this may be. It may well have some bearing on the unaccountable events at this crossroads. Do the accidents here have anything to do with the fact that at one time a gibbet stood where the roundabout is now? Corpses of hanged criminals were exposed there for weeks, sometimes for months and, it is said, criminals and suicides were once buried at this spot. Such pressures from the past, such depths of sadness and terror, may, it is thought, exert an influence on the present. Can such ancient horror be seared into the very atmosphere?

There can be no more terrible experience for the car driver than to come suddenly upon a pedestrian in his path and instinctively know that he will be able to stop in time. One late night in 1976 a woman driver was driving through Ide Hill, near Brasted. All at once, as she was passing the entry to Chains Farm, she saw a man in motor cycle leathers standing in the road only yards in front of her. She knew that she had no chance of avoiding the motor cyclist. Desperately, she slammed on her brakes but it was too late. She drove straight into him. She drew to a halt and got out of the car. But there was nothing to see. No young man, no scattered possessions. And her car bore no signs of damage.

When she reported the matter to the police at Sevenoaks they showed no signs of doubt of disbelief. They were quite accustomed to 'accidents' of that nature on that stretch of road, they said. But they did tell her that a young motor cyclist had a year or two earlier been the victim of a hit and run driver.

On 14th June 1979 an elderly pedestrian was knocked down in Maidstone Road, Sevenoaks. A witness to the 'accident' swore that the driver had no warning and that he could not have avoided the old lady. Save that no body was found nor were there any indications of damage on the bodywork of the car. On the same date, twenty years earlier, there had been an accident at the same spot. An elderly lady had been killed.

Christine Hall, a writer and lecturer living in Sandhurst, had a slightly different experience late one February night in 1997. She had been to a Women's Institute meeting in the Maidstone area giving a talk and demonstration of belly-dancing, and was driving home via Headcorn and Tenterden. As it had begun to drizzle she was driving slowly, taking extreme care, and it was near St Michael's that she was suddenly alerted to a pedestrian. Christine takes up the account of what occurred: 'I could see the man walking on the left side of the road very clearly. He was walking towards me, at first along the road, then into the road. I thought "He's drunk" and I swerved so that I did not hit him.

'When I got close, I could see right through him. He was still there, not only his outline, but his clothes, his face, but they were all see-through. This must have been a very brief moment, during which first he was in front of the car and then on my left, but it seemed long. I was relieved to have avoided an accident and full of amazement at being able to see through him. Then he was gone, just disappeared.

'There's no reason why I should have imagined it - I wasn't thinking about ghosts or about accidents at the time. If my imagination had played a trick on me, I'm sure it would have been the usual story of hitting the man in an accident, and it would surely have been a more exciting ghost, say a Celtic warrior or a Roman centurion in full armour. But this one was just a 20th century man - slim, in black, tight clothes which reminded me of the style young men wore in the fifties. It wasn't a spectacular looking ghost at all.'

Not then an accident - can Christine Hall have swerved and missed her phantom pedestrian? There appears to be no record of an earlier fatal accident at this spot, although, Andrew Green, who has written extensively about Kent's ghosts has said that he has heard of a number of witnesses who had a similar experience in this locality.

Perhaps Oxney's Grey Lady does not quite fit into this category for she is without doubt of the pre-motor car age. Nevertheless, in the course of her wanderings from the woods at Oxney Bottom and towards Eastry, she crosses the Dover road and she has been driven through by at least one car driver, a bus driver and a motor cyclist.

However, the most well known of Kent's 'accident' victims appears at Blue Bell Hill. It is said that the figure that appears with startling suddenness in front of drivers is the ghost of a young woman killed in a road accident in November 1965. Four girl friends had spent the afternoon trying on dresses for a forthcoming wedding. In the evening they went out to a pub to meet the bride's fiance. They had been on their way for only a very short time when their Cortina motor car skidded on a treacherous bend near the pedestrian bridge over Old Chatham Road on the A229, north of Maidstone. They collided with another car and three of the girls were killed.

Since this appalling accident there have been many sighting of a girl on the road. Worse still, there have been several phantom accidents. One night in 1974 a highly agitated Maurice Goodenough of Rochester reported to his local police station. He had just run down a young girl on Blue Bell Hill, he said. Only yards away from where the four young women had had their terrible accident nine years earlier, he had driven into a child with 'sickening force'. She was no more than ten years old, he thought, wearing a white blouse, skirt and white ankle socks. He had been unable to get help from passing motorists who ignored his desperate attempts to flag them down and, afraid to move her but reassured her that her injuries were less serious than he had feared, Goodenough had bundles up the girl in a tartan rug and lest her at the roadside while he drove to the police to seek help. The girl had jumped out so suddenly, he told the police, that he had no chance to stop in time.

Yet when the police accompanied Goodenough to the scene of the accident there was nothing there but a blanket. But she could not have walked away, the driver insisted. He had gone into her with some force. It was inconceivable that she should simply get up and walk off. And anyway, walk off where? She must have been in need of hospital attention for her forehead and knees were bleeding and the child was obviously shaken. Had someone picked her up? But why was Maurice Goodenough's car undamaged? Was he mistaken? And who was she? She was too young to be the ghost of one of the young women killed on that stretch of road in 1965. And he had carried her to the road side, actually lifted her from the ground. But if it had been a real accident, why was there no subsequent report from a hospital or the girl's parents?

Among the more recent phantom accidents is the experience of Ian Sharpe. On 10th November 1992, late at night, he was driving near the Aylesford turn-off on the Maidstone-bound carriageway on Blue Bell Hill. Without warning he saw a young girl appear in the road in front of him. She ran towards him. There was nothing he could do. It was all so sudden. Just before she disappeared under the bonnet of the car she seemed to stare straight at him, looking him straight in the eye. After skidding to a halt, Sharpe looked under the car for she must surely be there. But there was no sign of anyone. Frantically her searched the bushes at the side of the road but again there was no evidence of anyone injured. Desperate, just as Maurice Goodenough had been all those years earlier, he attempted to flag down cars but none of them would stop.

Ian Sharpe, understandably worried and shaken, reported the matter to the police. Together they went back to the place where Sharpe told them he had had his accident. They made a search of the area but found no sign of any injured girl. Nor were there any marks on the car. The police, apparently not too surprised at what had occurred, explained that such accidents were not unknown on this stretch of road. But, Sharpe said, she was 'not like a ghost'. She looked solid, human. One thing was certain, he said: 'It was the most scary experience of my life.'

Only two weeks later, on 24th November, at eleven o'clock at night, nineteen year old Chris Dawkins had a similar experience. He had driven through Blue Bell Hill village on his way to Maidstone and was passing the Robin Hood Lane junction, when a woman wearing a red scarf ran out into his path. She vanished in front of his car, seeming to fall underneath it. After the collision he stopped near the Lower Bell public house and went back to look for the accident victim. Finding no sign of any accident, he telephoned his father and the police. There was a thorough search of the area but no dead or injured pedestrian could be found.

Still, Chris Dawkins was convinced, as other motorists had been, that he had run over a woman. 'She ran in front of the car,' he said. 'She stopped and looked at me. There was no expression on her face. Then I hit her and it was as if the ground moved apart and she went under the car. I thought I had killed her because it wasn't as if she were see-through. She was solid - as real as you are.' And quite the same thing happened to Paula Cooper who was motoring up the hill early one Sunday morning in June of the following year. A figure ran out in front of her and she too thought she had hit someone. Again, a search of the area by police produced nothing and as ever the car had not been damaged. How similar this is to other reports.

Over the last thirty years or so many incidents on Blue Bell Hill have been reported and the police no accept and their reports conclude that motorists have encountered a ghost. In fact, more than one ghost has been met in the area of Blue Bell Hill. In 1969, David Smith of Rochester told the Evening Post of how on three or four occasions when driving on Blue Bell Hill he had seen two pedestrians walking up the hill. Although they looked solid enough, they had simply vanished when he was within four or five yards. 'Once I saw them walking down the hill on the side opposite the pavement,' he said. 'I was driving down the hill at the time and suddenly saw them walk straight across the road in front of an oncoming vehicle. The car drove straight through them and no trace of them was left.' Unlikely? Not on Blue Bell Hill it seems.

On a foggy night in January 1993, a couple in a car saw a haggard old woman, wearing clothing described as old-fashioned, walk into the Chatham-bound carriageway. The figure stopped in the middle of the road with her back to them. Then, as the driver slowed down, the old woman turned round. Angela Maiden, a passenger in the car driven by her husband, spoke of an 'overwhelming sense of evil and horror'. The Maidens described the apparition's small, wizened face. The eyes were close-set, small, round and black. 'Then,' the description went on, 'it began to sneer. It had an enormous mouth which was totally black and then it hissed and lifted its arm and began shaking twigs at us, as it it were putting a a curse on us. The hissing was really loud and it seemed to fill the car.' As fast as he was able, Mr Maiden pulled away and at the same time the figure seemed to disappear.

A police search found nothing, although they admitted that they had two or three similar calls that evening. Was it a hoax? Was some prankster loose that night? Do pranksters dress up and cross into the middle of excessively busy roads on foggy nights in January? Perhaps they do. But then, a taxi driver, Colin Eacott, had days earlier seen a similar figure and, later, the Reynolds family had an encounter with the old woman. Mrs Denise Reynolds had initially thought that the figure she saw on the roadside, waving what appeared to be heather, was a man dressed up. Certainly, she was sure that this was no gypsy. Her brother-in-law drove up the hill ten minutes later but there was no sign of any old woman at the roadside.

The phenomenon of the phantom hitchhiker is experienced throughout the world, so perhaps unsurprisingly for the past thirty years a young woman at the top of Blue Bell Hill has thumbed a lift to Maidstone. She sits in the rear seat of the car and when the driver pulls up to let her out at her destination she is not there. Despite the number of instances reported there are inevitable doubts about the hitchhiker. How is it that she always seems to occupy the back seat? If she were in the front, the driver would see her getting out. Is there no sustained conversation which, when it suddenly ends, might attract the attention of the driver before reaching the destination? Why is it that the hitchhiker always attracts single drivers? Nevertheless, there have been so many reports of the phantom hitchhiker on Blue Bell Hill that the possibility of her existence is difficult to dismiss outright.

On the notorious Oxney Bottom stretch of road between Dover and Deal, and known as the Haunted Highway, the Grey Lady has been frequently seen by drivers who have slowed down for her. Some years ago she was described by Martin Husk as 'an old lady dressed in a dark grey cloak hobbling along the nearside of the road.' As he passed her, 'she appeared to go into the thick undergrowth alongside the verge'. But at Christmas 1958, Tom Relf, the conductor on a double decker bus bound for Deal, had an experience that quite unnerved him. 'I was inside the lower deck,' he said, 'when the bus stopped at Oxney Bottom someone boarded the vehicle and went upstairs.' But when he went to collect the fare from the new passenger, the upper deck was empty. His driver later confirmed that they had stopped at Oxney Bottom and that they had taken on a passenger in dark clothes. Had the Grey Lady become another phantom hitchhiker?

Phantom hitchhikers and phantom victims, vehicles that unaccountably malfunction: all related to terrifying accidents, to head-on crashes and mangled pedestrians. The violence of such horrific events, the last-second agonies of those involved, seem to impressed themselves so deeply on the very places where they occur that down the years, they are somehow required to play themselves over and over again, time after time after time.