WEIRD WHEELS FROM THE WOLDS
ROB GANDY continues his look at Lincolnshire weirdness with a selection of two-wheeled road ghosts.
ROB GANDY continues his ongoing investigation of Lincolnshire liminalities, turning his attention to a lesser-known type of road ghost. The wartime airfields and lonely highways of the county appear to be host to a wide variety of two-wheeled phantoms, from vanishing airmen on pushbikes to a ghostly lass killed in a motorcycle accident...
This article details stories about paranormal events in the county of Lincolnshire in which two-wheeled vehicles were involved. The witnesses contacted me in response to my call for stories about The Ruskington Horror, (see FT401:32-38, 402:38-43), and although there was no connection with this specific phenomenon their experiences deserve a wider audience. I confess that none of them actually took place in the Lincolnshire Wolds proper, which is a designated Area of Natural Beauty, but I couldn’t resist the alliterative title. Bikes are comparatively uncommon in the panoply of phantom hitchhikers and road ghosts, although there are examples (see FT358:42-47), which makes them particularly intriguing.
THE FOSDYKE SAGA
Around the year 2000, Ms A was travelling alone, north along the A17 from Holbeach towards Sutterton. She was returning from her work as a nurse in a very challenging environment. Therefore, although she might have been through a gruelling 12-hour shift from 9am to 9pm, her mental state was no different to that after every such shift. She recalls that it was probably around midnight that she actually got away; being delayed in leaving was par for the course. As was her wont, she opted for the therapeutic effects of a blast of Robert Palmer on the car CD player.
It must have been April or May, and fine weather, because she had her driver’s window fully open. With no other traffic on the road she put her foot down and was possibly travelling slightly in excess of the 70mph (113km/h) speed limit. She was on the long stretch of road at Fosdyke, which has very good street lighting, when she was startled by a motor
bike (complete with very loud engine noise) appearing close behind her in her rear-view mirror; she estimates that it was less than 10ft (3m) behind her car – not quite ‘kissing distance’ as she says. This was very sudden, as she is certain that she would have been aware of its approach if it had been catching up from behind. She could only really make out the very bright headlight, rather than the features of the rider or motorbike itself, due to its close proximity to the back of her car partially obscuring it. The motorbike did not make any visible effort to pull out and overtake, and it stayed in this position for the next two minutes – which would have involved a distance of well over two miles (3.2km). Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the motorbike disappeared. As she recollects, both sight and sound ceased simultaneously. This really perturbed Ms A, who knew there were no side roads to explain its appearance or its disappearance. Nevertheless, she didn’t feel at all scared or threatened by the motorbike. She has driven that route many times, both before and after this experience, but has seen nothing untoward. Even after all these years her memory of the incident is very clear.
THE METHERINGHAM LASS
There was a wartime RAF airfield at Metheringham, which is approximately eight miles (13km) east of the A15, between Lincoln and Sleaford. Local author Bruce Barrymore Halpenny, who wrote the Ghost Stations series of books, 2 received many reports of a ghostly
figure standing in the road that crosses part of the old airfield, with witnesses including both RAF personnel and civilians. 3 Stories from a range of sources describe a woman wearing a jacket with RAF insignia who approaches cars and sometimes interacts with them. She begs the driver to help her boyfriend, who has been injured in a motorbike accident; but when the driver gets out of the car, the woman has vanished, and there is no sign of the boyfriend. Apparently, there can be an accompanying smell of lavender, followed by the odour of decomposing flesh. 4
Halpenny’s investigations determined that this phantom was probably that of 19-year-old Catherine Bystock, from Horncastle, to whom he gave the title ‘The Metheringham Lass’. Towards the end of WWII Catherine had been to a local dance with her fiancé, a Flight Sergeant from the base. She was riding pillion on his motorbike on the way home when the motorbike skidded on wet surfacing at the base and crashed, with Catherine being thrown from the motorbike and killed instantly, sustaining serious head injuries (her fiancé survived). The crash occurred close to where sightings are are said to occur in the summer months, usually at around 9.30pm – the time of the accident – and always after dusk starts to fall. 5 In 2009 the Spalding Paranormal Investigations team, led by Mark Stretton, claimed to have caught an image of the ghost on camera.
I subsequently heard from Garry Ross of the Lincs Paranormal Research Team that this story has “not an ounce of truth to any of
catherine was thrown from the motorbike and killed instantly
it”. He suggests that it was all made up by a worker employed to undertake renovations at the airfield; Catherine Bystock never existed and there was no motorbike crash. He admits that this is rather disappointing.
SCUNTHORPE SCARE
It was around 11.15pm on Thursday 23 November 1978 that Joe (pseudonym) was travelling home to Ashby having dropped off his fatherin-law and two brothers-in-law at Digby Street
in Scunthorpe. His route took him down Brigg Road (A1029) in a southerly direction. The weather was cold and dry, with a crisp snow cover in various scattered areas. He crossed over the railway bridge by Alexander Road and was opposite the Rowland Road junction (on his right) when he found himself travelling about 200 yards behind a young couple riding on a moped. They seemed to be in perfect control of the moped as they reached the left turn to the main approach road to the British Steel Offices. Suddenly Joe saw what he can only describe as “a hazy, ghostly apparition” start to glide across the road from the right from a field adjoining Rowland Road. The ‘apparition’ then passed completely through the moped and shook it violently to and fro so that the helpless and terrified boy and girl were thrown off into the road. The ‘apparition’ then continued gliding through the fencing before disappearing through the metal sheeting into the old Heavy Section Beam mill.
Joe slowed down, with the intention of stopping to help the couple, but when he arrived at the spot where they had lost control of the moped, his own car began to shake and it turned very cold inside. Fortunately, a taxi was coming up in the opposite, northerly direction, and the driver turned round at the Rowland Road junction and came back to join them. He too had witnessed what had happened and was able to call his office from his cab phone to ask them to phone for an ambulance. The boy had sustained a badly cut leg and a damaged shoulder, with grazes to his hands, and his girlfriend had grazing to her leg and face, and cuts and bleeding to her eyebrow. When all four had gathered their composure, they questioned each other about what had just happened. Nobody could say for certain. All Joe could think of was that it was a ghost – he was aware of other reports of other cars and motorbikes mysteriously crashing through walls and fencing and ending up in British Steel property adjacent to that stretch of road. He also claims that there is a long history of fatal accidents on that particular section of road. Joe could not wait for the ambulance to arrive because he had to get home to his poorly wife, and so the taxi driver (who Joe knew personally from working at British Steel Road Transport Department) stayed with the injured couple. Unfortunately, the taxi driver is now deceased and Joe lost the names of the boy and girl, so he is not able to get them to corroborate this story from over 40 years ago; but there is no doubt that this was an extremely strange, frightening and dangerous event which involved four witnesses.
RIDING ROUND IN CIRCLES
Jack (pseudonym) was 27 years old when his father was rushed as an emergency to Grantham Hospital on New Year’s Eve 1973. Although Jack worked in Grantham, over the next 12 days he would go back home to Aunsby, have his tea and then take his mother on the round trip to visit his father. The route took them through Oasby and Welby, and up to the B6403 (the old Roman Road ‘Ermine Street’), which is called the ‘High Dyke’ locally, before heading for Grantham via Londonthorpe. On one occasion, around 7.30pm, he turned left on to the ‘High Dyke’; there was only one car coming in the opposite direction, but it was some way off. The night was clear and dry, and ahead of him he saw a man riding a ‘sit up and beg’ bicycle on his side of the road, wearing a long dark overcoat and a cap. The man showed up in the dipped headlights, and on the right-hand side of his bike wheel frame a square red light was clearly visible, as it should have been. The man was riding a lot further out into the road than people would normally do and, because of the oncoming car, Jack slowed down and stayed behind him. His mother asked “What are you doing?” to which he replied “I’m keeping behind that bike.” Puzzled, his mother said: “What bike? I can’t see any bike!” And all the time the perfectly normal-looking man was pedalling away in front of Jack.
Suddenly, as the other car approached on the opposite side of the road, a circle of fog appeared – approximately 20ft (6m) in diameter – looking like a massive tyre around the cyclist. Jack then knew something was wrong, and so stayed behind the solid-looking man who continued his pedalling. The circle of fog became smaller and smaller, and Jack could see the cyclist still pedalling inside it. But when it became a lump of fog that just covered the man and his bike, the man, his bike and the fog completely disappeared, leaving nothing but clear road ahead. Jack immediately stopped the car, with the other car now having passed by in the opposite direction.
suddenly, joe saw what he can only describe as “a hazy, ghostly apparition”
There were no cars behind them. The whole experience had lasted roughly 45 seconds.
While his father was resting in bed on a subsequent evening, Jack told him about what had happened. His mother added, “I could tell he could see something that I couldn’t,” to which his father replied, “If you say that then I will believe him.” Jack insists on the details of what happened, even though some people have accused him of lying, being drunk, or having a vivid imagination. As he says: “I told Dad the truth. Indeed, why would anyone invent an incident like the one I saw?”
Interestingly, not long after this episode, Jack bumped into Joe, a long-distance lorry driver from Liverpool who he knew well. He told Joe about what had happened to him on the ‘High Dyke’, to which Joe responded by describing an experience he’d had when driving a lorry in London, with a mate, in the early hours one morning in the 1950s. He was driving along the road when, to his horror, a woman ran in front of his lorry. Joe put both feet out on the clutch and brake, and pulled on the handbrake, but the lorry went straight over the woman. He got out with his mate, and they looked under the lorry – but there was no sign of the woman’s body. A policeman was patrolling his beat nearby and came up to them to ask what the matter was. They told their story, not expecting him to believe them, but he replied by saying that there used to be a mental hospital on that road and that a woman had committed suicide there. He added that what had happened to Joe had often happened before, and advised the two of them to get back in the lorry for 10 minutes to get over the shock before they drove away; which they did. I asked Jack if he could remember the location of this incident, but he didn’t think that Joe had been that specific, and he had long since lost touch with him.
THE PEDALLING PILOT
One lovely evening around sunset in 1996, Dave (pseudonym) and his best friend Chris were alone at the aircraft spotters’ car park for RAF Coningsby on Dogdyke Road (just south of the sewage works). They were watching planes and soaking up the atmosphere of the countryside. They had been there about 10 minutes, leaning on the car bonnet facing the base and listening to the sounds of nature, when a man in his mid-30s steadily rode past them on a sit-up-and-beg type pushbike. He came from their right, heading up towards Coningsby village, and was on the public road rather than the road inside the base’s perimeter fencing. He looked like a pilot and was dressed in green overalls and a flying jacket with an RAF chip hat on his head. The man said something to the two lads and they responded by saying “Hello Sir!” He waved back and said “Alright boys!” before carrying on down the road. The lads looked at one another, but after a couple of seconds Dave turned round to look at the airman again – only to find that he had vanished into thin air. Given the flatness of the area, the length of the road, and the fencing around the base, there was simply no way that he could have disappeared from sight. Dave and Chris looked at each other again, and went pale. Determined to investigate, Dave got into his car and drove along the road to look for the airman, but he was nowhere to be seen. The whole episode had taken between four and five minutes and so wasn’t a simple misperception. Dave has subsequently spoken to several people who frequent the aircraft spotters’ car park and some say that they have also seen the mystery airman, who has also been reported many times on roads around East Kirkby. One theory is that it’s the ghost of a pilot killed in a nearby aircraft crash during WWII. Whatever it was that Dave and Chris saw that day – a ghost or a time slip – it certainly left a lasting impression on them.
CONCLUSIONS
There can be no doubt that the above events represent very diverse phantom hitchhiker/ road ghost phenomena, all within the uncommon ‘two-wheeled’ subgenre. One interesting point is that multiple witnesses were involved in three of the four first-hand testimonies, and yet in one case one person saw the phantom while the other saw nothing. It only goes to highlight the complex and bizarre nature of these incidents, with some really stretching credulity: a talking revenant; a contracting circle of mist that engulfs a cyclist; and something that can sweep across a road and knock a couple off their moped. And all of this just in Lincolnshire!
But as we will see in future instalments, even stranger things have happened to people across this one very weird English county... watch this space!
NOTES
1 www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/local-news/ haunted-stretch-lincolnshire-road-left-3455381
2 www.bbh.zulem.com/Bruce_Barrymore_Halpenny_Aviation_Military_Books1.html
3 I came across this story online while searching for information rather than receiving a direct approach from a witness. However, as it is well-documented and wasn’t quoted in Uneasy Riders ( FT358:42-47) I decided to include it here.
4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metheringham_ Lass
5 www.bbc.co.uk/lincolnshire/content/articles/2009/10/27/metheringham_lass_feature. shtml.
6 www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/local-news/ ghostly-image-wartime-airwoman-caught-98258. I must confess that I cannot make out any specific features. Given that Spalding Paranormal Investigations does not appear to be currently operating, I tried to contact Mark via Lincolnshire Live, who indicated they could not help because GDPR rules require people’s personal contact information to be deleted from records after a certain time. After all, the article is over 10 years old; but it did say that Catherine’s ghost “has made regular appearances”, so travellers might still be waved down and asked for their help.
7 www.lincsprt.com/
✒ ROB GANDY is a Visiting Professor at Liverpool Business School, Liverpool John Moores University and a regular contributor to FT. A lifelong fortean, he has eclectic interests in all things weird, including phantom hitchhikers, ghosts, strange sports and folk customs, time slips and synchronicities.