Paranormal Encounters on British Roads

I once saw a pothole on the A470 being filled in by the council only for it to magically reappear a week later - apparently that doesn't count as a paranormal road encounter, but fear not because author Peter A. McCue has a new book coming out that details even spookier events than reappearing pot holes.

Retired clinical psychologist Peter, from Glasgow, talks about sightings of freaky figures, ghosts, and even UFOs in his latest paranormal book, which is published next month.

Peter,, said: “There are lots and lots of reports of people having strange experiences while driving."

Read more at the Scottish Sun

Shock footage shows ghostly woman terrorising a man on a motorcycle

We do like our weird news on the Archive so I wanted to share this story that recently appeared in the Daily Star newspaper -  The clip published on the newspaper's website and linked to below  shows a man riding down a country road on his own, when something ghastly appears in front of him.
The figure, which appears to have no lower half, floats in the middle of the road before disappearing altogether.

Apparantly the event was captured by a CCTV camera - thought why a CCTV camera should be mounted in a country lane is beyond me so I shout, 'fake'

 Check out the Videos HERE

real life hauntings - Ghostly chavs run riot in Peterborough

I kid you not but apparently ghostly yobs are running riot in  Peterborough
This FROM THE EVENING TELEGRAPH


Police in Peterborough have been called on to act as ghost busters by victims who feel they may have been targeted by thieves and yobs from beyond the grave.
Findings released by Cambridgeshire Police following a Freedom of Information request by The Evening Telegraph, show Peterborough police have been alerted on six occasions in the last three years to deal with ghostly apparitions.

And in an eerie twist, three of these sightings occurred on the same date – 9th September – in consecutive years.
Two sightings also happened on the same day – 21st February this year – in central Peterborough.
Police said that all reports featuring the word ‘ghost’ in the last three years had occurred within the county’s Northern Division which covers the whole of Peterborough.
The full list of ghostly sightings reported to police includes:
- On 9 September 2009: police were called to a report of a burglary in the PE1 post code area.
The caller told officers it was believed there was a ghost in their house but no trace was ever found.
- On 21 November 2009: a disturbance in a field adjoining a house in Thorney was reported.
Officers were told by locals that this may have been caused by the ghost of a child.
- On 9 September 2010: police were called to a home in Stanground one week after an attempted burglary.
Officers reported that a child had woken at night and believed that a ghost was trying to enter through a window.
- On 21 February 2011: officers stopped a “confused woman” in Peterborough city centre.
They noted that she appeared to be “talking to ghosts”.
- On the same date in the PE1 area, police received a call from a person who claimed to be hearing “ghost noises” as well as seeing hands coming over the top of a door.
The caller also reported a group of three males outside the property, one of whom was a white male.
- On 9 September 2011: a driver on the A47 in central Peterborough reported a person walking down a slip road onto the carriageway against the flow of traffic.
The driver was described to be in such a state of shock that it felt like they “had seen a ghost”.
In all cases police say that no further action was taken by officers.
A spokesperson for Cambridgeshire Police said: “Reports like these are extremely rare but where people have genuine concerns they or their property is at risk we will investigate if appropriate.”
However, the sightings have come as little surprise to Stuart Orme, who works at the supposedly-haunted Peterborough Museum and organises popular ghost walks through the city centre.
Mr Orme said: “Peterborough is an ancient city with a lot of history and tales get built up over time.
“We have an historic cathedral and other old buildings with links to hundreds of people from the past.
“There have been lots of ghost stories in the city over the years and we go through these on our walks.
“I would say that around 80 per cent of ghost stories can be explained with a rational answer.
“But it’s the remaining 20 per cent that no matter how hard you try to think of one, no logical answer exists.”
Among the places which are said to be haunted are the Queensgate Shopping Centre and the city’s museum.
The museum is said to be stalked by the ghost of a First World War Australian Soldier Sergeant Thomas Hunter, who was taken there in 1916 after being wounded.
Back then the museum was a hospital and Sergeant Hunter died there.
Since then staff have regularly reported furniture being mysteriously moved about.
Peterborough Cathedral is also said to be haunted by three ghosts.
The apparition of a little girl who was apparently murdered there in the 1860s is said to have appeared in a window in one of the building’s precincts.
The ghosts of a monk and a stone mason who also supposedly died there have been spotted as well.
The city’s Cowgate area is believed to be haunted following an incident of body snatching back in the 1820s.
Mr Orme added: “Although the museum is currently closed to the public we still have staff working here and some of those have heard mysterious footsteps when nobody else was around.
“There have been several ghost sightings at the Queensgate Shopping Centre over the past 30 years.
“The centre is built on an old residential area which used to contain shops and homes so people say the ghosts could be former residents there.”
So why are people so fascinated by ghost sightings and what should they do if they experience one?
Mr Orme said: “Ghost sightings capture people’s imaginations because they are linked to our fascination about what happens after death.
“I have met people who claim to have seen ghosts and some of them are the most down-to-earth rational men and women you could ever meet.
“But when they start telling you about the ghost they saw their belief is completely rigid and no amount of reasoning can change their minds.
“At the end of the day people are suckers for a good ghost story – even those who don’t believe in ghosts – and that’s never going to change.”
Have you experienced a ghost sighting in Peterborough recently? Contact our newsdesk on 01733 588728.
The grim activities of the body snatchers
At the end of Cowgate, there used to stand a graveyard, which was removed when the Queensgate Shopping Centre was built.
Eerily, it was one of the last places in the UK to be raided by grisly body snatchers who dug up freshly buried corpses and sold them to doctors for medical practice.
One evening in 1828 a cart was seen outside the cemetery with two men loading suspicious sacks onto it.
The alarm was raised and the men fled, with a cart chase ending near Norman Cross on the edge of the city. Here the men abandoned their getaway cart and fled over the fields.
But do their victims still wander Cowgate, eternally trapped and angry at their sad fate?

A ghost story

The ghost story holds a long pedigree in horror cinema and literature - indeed it stretches back to the start of storytelling itself. When early man gathered around the campfire to tell stories it wasn’t Harry Potter or chic lit they were talking about but ghosts, ghouls and things that go bump in the night. The ghost story is a perennial favourite and still provides inspiration for film folk and writers – The Paranormal Activity series and Chrtistopher Ransom’s writing anyone.

In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to realistic, life-like visions. 

I can’t remember what the first ghost movie I ever saw would have been, but I can make a good guess that the first ghost stories I would have read would have come from the pen of James Herbert or Stephen King, and it was only later when I started exploring the genre that I came across many of the old masters. Writers like W W Jacobs (and I still class The Monkey’s Paw as one of the most scary stories I’ve ever read), Algernon Blackwood and Henry James would be presented to modern readers in one or other of the anthology paperbacks that were popular in the 70′s and 80′s.

There is something about ghosts that fascinates us deep down on a primal level – for all our modern ways, our technology there can not be many of us who have not at one time or other felt a delicious chill as we cogitated on the possibilities of spirits returning to haunt the living. As children we all knew some house, some old building that was supposedly haunted. Every village, every city, has its own legends passed down from generation to generation. I grew up in the small Welsh village of Gilfach Goch and we had our own legends, many of which were collected in a chapter in Katie Pritchards Story of Gilfach Goch - The White Lady and the headless horseman seemed to haunt the coal scarred mountains.

Ghosts fascinate us - According to the National Research Federation, the number of Americans planning to visit a haunted attraction this year spiked to 20.8 percent, up from 2009's 17 percent and just 14.9 percent five years ago.

Ruins St. Peters Church - haunted by a white lady

There are many more legends of hauntings in my own locality – Pontypridd’s Maslter’s Arms is supposedly haunted by the ghost of a servent girl, Porth’s Wyndham Club is reputed to be haunted by one of its old landlords and perhaps most terrifying of all is The Griffin Inn just outside Tonyrefail which is haunted by a screaming skull that appears at the stroke of midnight each and every New Year’s day - or so the old stories go.You know it’s a safe bet that anyone reading this post will know a ghost legend or two from their own area and leaving details in the comments section of this post would be really cool and anyone fancy writing a guest post, a ghost guest post, along these lines would be even cooler.

Strange Days

A glitch in time is one of the theories surrounding the strange happenings at Monmouthshire’s Skirrid Inn. The building is over 900 years old and was first recorded in 1110. The Inn is still in use with the present day landlord being one  Geoff Fiddler.

The glitch in time theory is that somehow people can see events that happened in the past, as if they are somehow looking through a window in time itself. One other hypothesis is that the fabric of the old building and the land it stands on can somehow absorb and record things that have happened here. If a recording can be put on a CD or Hard Drive then why is it not possible, the theory goes, that nature can do this given the right geological conditions? The ancient Skirrid Mountain Inn lies at the foot of the Skirrid Mountain, just off the main road between Abergavenny and Hereford.. It is reputed to be one of the UK’s most haunted locations. According to historical records, the inn has been providing its patrons with hospitality  since at least 1104 – the era of the Norman conquest – and possibly, even earlier.

Ghosts said to haunt the inn include a local clergyman, Father Henry Vaughn. Fanny Price, who worked at the inn during the 18th century, is said to be very active throughout the Skirrid. It is believed Fanny died of consumption in 1873, aged just 35. She is reportedly most active in Room 3. Other ghostly occurrences include sightings of a spirit dubbed the White Lady, the sound of soldiers in the courtyard, the rustling of an unseen lady’s dress, a powerful scent of perfume.
It is the oldest pub in Wales.
It is believed that the first floor of the inn was once used as a Court of Law and over the period of a great many years, as many as 180 prisoners were adjudged guilty of crimes serious enough to warrant the sentence of death by hanging, a sentence that was carried out at the inn itself, the last case of capital punishment purportedly taking place sometime prior to the death of Oliver Cromwell  (1599–1658).
Owain Glyndŵr is said to have rallied his forces in the cobbled courtyard in the early 15th century before raiding nearby settlements sympathetic to the English king, Henry IV.

Over the years many strange happenings have been reported at the Inn from strange noises to objects moving about for no reason, and sometimes glasses have flown from shelves as though thrown by unseen hands. In fact the current landlord claims that about 15 glasses are broken in this way every week.
There are regular paranormal evenings at the inn and anyone interested in a little ghost hunting can find details HERE

Fangs for the Memory - Ghostly pictures

This picture was taken by the husband of the woman in the picture on a sunny afternoon with ordinary print film. They had just moved into their new home in Chicago, Illinois. In the window to the left of them clearly shows a older woman with her hair put up in a bun and a bulldog next to her. There was no one in the house at the time of the picture taking. 

This second photograph was by Jackie Rhame of Florian, Alabama during a visit to a Six Flags Great America Amusement Park in Arlington, Texas. It clearly shows a semi-transparent figure of a little boy in the grass dressed in a red sweater with a white collar or shirt. The camera was a C- 126 and it was misting rain and humid outside. She was simply taking a picture of the Texas Giant.

And finally this remarkable image first appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times (12-21-03) and was apparently captured with a closed-circuit security camera at Hampton Court Palace in London, England. The palace was built in 1525 on the River Thames 10 miles west of central London and was one the the places that King Henry VIII lived. Jane Seymour, his third wife, died there giving birth to a son, and her ghost is said to walk through one of the cobbled courtyards carrying a candle. No one seems to know what this ghostly figure represents but according to security, it sure looks like a ghost.