Newslink December

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The A38: a traditional dual carriageway
with a ghostly reputation
Guy Annan
Okay, I admit, this has nothing to do with
driver training or road safety... unless you
count the regular use of the emergency
stop, of course. But as I was thinking
about copy around Halloween, a story
came back to me that I thought I’d share.
The road between Taunton and
Wellington – the A38 – is haunted.
Don’t believe me? Well, drive along this
road during the hours of darkness or in
the early hours on a frosty night and it’s
not unusual to encounter a tall, thin
bedraggled figure hitching a lift.
Apparently when he gets in the car he
talks of the awful accidents that have
happened along that road and then
suddenly, when the driver turns his head
to engage in conversation, vanishes, only
to reappear two or three miles further
down the road when he jumps out in front
of the car, causing it to brake or swerve to
avoid an accident. When the driver gets
out of the car to check if the person is
hurt there’s no one there.
The police once found a car stopped on
the side of the road with the driver in a
state of shock as he recounted a story
very similar to the above.
Others have had similar experiences:
they include a lorry driver who thought he
had run a man down and a motorcyclist
who broke his leg as a result of crashing
to avoid a figure who materialised out of
nowhere.
The best known source of the story
comes from 1958 and a lorry driver
called Harold Unsworth. He said that on
three separate occasions at about 3am he
had given a lift to a man he picked up
from the Blackbird Inn on the A38. Each
time the hitchhiker described the
accidents which had taken place along
the road in the past. On the third occasion
of giving the man a lift, Unsworth said
that the mysterious man asked him if he
would wait while he collected some cases
and then drop him off at another point
further down the road. After waiting for
20 minutes Unsworth decided to continue
on his journey alone.
Three miles down the road he saw a
figure in his headlights waving a torch. He
was terrified to see that this figure was in
fact the man in grey, who was shaking a
fist at him. The figure leapt in front of his
lorry, causing Unsworth to stop and get
out, expecting to find that the man had
been struck. However, he found the man
standing in the road again, shaking his
fist and cursing at having been left
behind. To his shock the figure then
turned his back on Harold and vanished
instantly.
Other similar tales have arisen from the
same stretch of road. A woman in white
is said to haunt a stretch of the A38 near
the reservoir at Barrow Gurney. As with
the figure described above, drivers have
reported having to slam the brakes on or
swerve to avoid a figure who suddenly
appears in the middle of the road before
vanishing. The road is littered with skid
marks which show where drivers have
been forced to suddenly brake to avoid
the woman, who is said to be dressed in
a long white coat...
Newslink writes... We’re not commenting
on the supernatural, and we’ve certainly
never heard of a haunted test centre...
but the A38 isn’t the UK’s only road with
a ghostly reputation, as we discovered...
Harewood Road, Holymoorside
The three-mile lane linking Beeley Moor
with Holymoorside is reported to be
haunted by phantom monks.
Monks would be sent over from
Beauchief Abbey to Harewood Grange, to
work on the land, as a punishment for
misbehaving.
An uncomfortable atmosphere has also
been reported around the entrance to the
abandoned Hunger Hill Pumping Station.
A11 Thetford Bypass
The A11 dual carriageway Thetford
bypass is reputedly haunted by a
phantom gamekeeper appearing on car
bonnets. While waiting at a traffic light,
one driver witnessed a car from the
1930s pass and vanish.
The A38 near
Barrow Gurney
reservoir:
haunted by a
mysterious
woman in white
A21 Sevenoaks Bypass
The A21 Sevenoaks Bypass is reputedly
haunted by a ghostly sliproad which leads
drivers into oncoming traffic.
A22 Caterham Bypass
On a certain section of the Caterham
bypass, spectral females have been seen
in the carriageway and crossing the road.
A61 Unstone-Dronfield Bypass
Cars heading northbound past Monk
Wood are known to suddenly veer off
down an embankment just a few feet
before the crash barrier starts.
The bypass is also believed to be
haunted as a result of horrific fatal injuries
sustained in accidents.
A616 Stocksbridge Bypass
The A616 north of Sheffield is known
as the Stocksbridge Bypass.
During the bypass’s construction,
security staff reported encounters with
phantom children dancing around an
electricity pylon and a ghostly monk
standing on Pea Royd Bridge; he was
believed to have been from the Hunshelf
Priory.
A75 road, Scotland
The A75 road between – appropriately!
– Annan and Gretna Green has been
called Scotland’s most haunted road.
According to one story, in 1957 a truck
driver swerved to avoid a couple walking
in the road but when he stopped to
investigate, the pair had vanished. Other
versions of the stories tell of a couple or
group of friends walking down the road at
night and drivers constantly plagued and
harrassed by shadowy figures, from an
elderly woman to the back-end of a semi
truck that they nearly hit before braking,
only for it to disappear.
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