5 Spooky Roadside Urban Legends from the UK



America is often seen to have a monopoly on spooky roadside stories: Chicago has the famous Resurrection Mary, a clammy bleached-blonde spirit that asks for a ride then disappears, and there’s not a Lover’s Lane in the U.S. that hasn’t been the scene of near-murder by a hook-handed madman.

But the U.K. has its fair share of ghoulish roadside tales, too – and many of them stretch back further into history than those of the young nation across the pond. Take heed of the five ghostly stories below – if you’re off on a road trip any time soon, you might want to use your route planner to avoid Dunstable…



The Old Lady of Ragley



Long before the first thick mist flummoxed a windscreen wiper and blanketed a fog light, long before the first tire squealed in fear, the structures of a good paranormal roadside story were established. The original ‘phantom hitchhiker’ was reported at the turn of the 19th century but the bare bones of the story’s plot have been told in a myriad of modern settings.



In the late 1800s, those driving past Ragley Park in Warwickshire would see an old lady by the side of the road, apparently in need of a lift. They’d stop and ask her where she was going, the answer invariably being a crossroads near Dunnington at a distance of about two miles.



She’d climb up into the carriage behind and the driver would carry her non-stop to where she’d asked to be dropped. But when they reached her destination and he opened the door to help her out, the carriage would be empty and no sign that the ghostly old lady had ever been there could be found.



Locals were so unnerved by the persistent haunting that they dug at the spot where the woman was routinely appearing. There they found a woman’s skeleton, alone, buried apparently without ceremony. It was moved to an anonymous grave in consecrated ground and the spot was exorcised, after which the ghost was never seen again.



Lady Snagge’s Headless Ghost



A small road in Cranford is the inauspicious haunting ground of Lady Elizabeth Snagge, beheaded by a small thread of cotton stretched over the lane as she rode to meet her lover in the 17th century. Her murderers, apparently unperturbed by her gory corpse, stole her jewels and rich clothing before disappearing into the night – legend has it her headless spirit gallops up and down the road in search of the thieves that cut her down.



The Hairy Hands of Dartmoor



Dartmoor is a large moor in the south of England over which a long, desolate B road stretches. Since the 1920s, mysterious occurrences have been reported: horses shying, carts swerving without prompt, vehicles refusing to obey their drivers.

It’s relatively recently that a specific ghoul has been credited with the road’s sinister track record – a pair of disembodied hairy hands that press themselves to windscreens and grab at steering wheels, forcing cars to stop or swerve into the verge. One Army Captain reported that the hairy hands had placed themselves over his own on the handlebars of his motorbike and gripped, causing him to turn and crash; one woman, who was ignorant of the legend until she astounded some local friends with the story, thought she’d imagined the hands moving across her vision as her car stalled.



It’s speculated that the hands belong to an ex-inmate of the nearby prison, HM Dartmoor, or they’re the ghostly remains of a man who died in a crash. Some locals rather cynically suggest ‘the ghost’ is in fact just the road’s unusually steep camber – no more than an excuse used by reckless drivers that are unfamiliar with its quirks when they call for roadside assistance.



Tring’s ‘Lean Dog’



A similarly hirsute ghoul hangs about in Tring, a small market town in Hertfordshire. A fierce black dog with glowing red eyes is said to stand in the middle of the main road where a gibbet once stood – the ghost of a chimney sweep that was executed for a crime he didn’t commit. Those who see it report it has a lean body covered in dank black hair and will crouch down as it’s approached.



Ghostly Cricketers in Dunstable



In 1958, a coach carrying a factory’s cricket team crashed on its way back from a match in Milton, killing two of its sporting passengers. At the site of the crash on the A5 outside Dunstable, two figures in whites have been seen forlornly wandering by the roadside.

A taxi driver once reported a man in cricket gear had stepped out in front of his car. Thinking he had crashed into the man, he quickly parked up – only to find no evidence of damage and no-one nearby.