As the days get darker, the nights get longer and All Hallows’ Eve approaches, ghosts, ghouls, spectres and poltergeist are at large. At this time of year, many believe that the veil between our world and the afterlife thins, meaning that we’re more likely to come face to face with the undead.
To mark this spooky time of year, Time Out has put together a list of places across the country that you’re most likely to encounter paranormal activity. These locales will have your heart racing, spine tingling and hair standing on end.
If you want to get really spooked, head for the most haunted place in all of Britain: Blue Bell Hill in Kent (or, as it’s less dramatically known, the A229). The cursed road travels between Maidstone and Medway and is said to be haunted by the ghost of 22-year-old bride-to-be Suzanne Browne.
In November 1965, Browne was driving along the road with two of her friends the night before her wedding when they were tragically killed in a crash. Four years later, a man reported seeing two eerie figures walk towards him then suddenly disappear. He saw them on another occasion, only this time he drove straight through them.
In 1971, another guy named James Skene claimed that a woman in white suddenly appeared in front of his car while he was driving home from work. He gave her a lift to Chatham but saw her disappear into thin air as soon as she got out of the car. Then, in 1972, Bob Vanderpeer said he picked up a young hitchhiker on the hill, only to turn around and see that she had vanished from the back seat.
Since then, there have been around 50 reports of supernatural sightings on the road. Several drivers have said that a women suddenly ran out into the middle of the road and stared into their eyes as they hit her. Then, when they went to see if she’s okay, she had vanished without a trace.
Matt Blake, curator of Time Out’s most haunted list and author of Hearth of Darkness, said: ‘I have even met a man who said he saw a young woman in white standing by the side of the A277 as he drove home one night. “I’m not a ghost guy at all,” he told me, “But I know what I saw. She was there, and then she wasn’t”.’
Suzanne’s not the only ghost said to haunt to road. There are also tales of a woman in a red scarf appearing in front of cars before disappearing under the bonnet (thought to be a young maid who was murdered nearby in 1916) and stories of an old lady who once lived in the neighbouring woods roaming around. So, travel along Blue Bell Hill at your own peril.
See Time Out’s full list of the UK’s most haunted places here.
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