Roman soldiers march on M6, Britain's most haunted road

[It's VERY scary, kids...!!!]

Roman soldiers march on M6, Britain's most haunted road

Martin Wainwright
Tuesday October 31, 2006

Guardian

'For the first time since ghost-hunting became an organised science,
Britain's spooks and apparitions have made a motorway their favourite road
to haunt.
After years of weird goings-on in lonely lanes or moorland crossings, the M6
has recorded more alleged sightings and spine-tingling feelings than any
other route in the country. Roman soldiers, a distraught woman hitchhiker
and a phantom lorry going the wrong way have all appeared on the six busy
lanes - or out of their users' imaginations.

"We assumed Britain's spookiest road would turn out to be a dark lane near
an ancient battlefield," said Tony Simmons, sightings coordinator for the
survey. "But, when you think about it, these findings make sense. The M6 is
one of Britain's longest roads and it travels through many counties - and
therefore an immense amount of history." The eerie encounters have been
recorded by a hospital consultant, lorry drivers and the hauntings expert
Paul Devereux, who used a Geiger counter to test radiation levels at sites
of repeated reports. Spooks, or conditions which lead 45% of all drivers to
think they have seen them, occur throughout the route's 230 miles from
Carlisle to Rugby.

"It's interesting that we've had more really clear sightings reported from
the M6 than any other road," said Mr Simmons, whose monitoring was organised
by the roadbuilding company Tarmac. The survey's results also include more
traditional scenes of hauntings such as the A9 in the Highlands of Scotland,
where a stagecoach with bewigged footmen has appeared to a succession of
drivers. Other reports include eyes peeping out of bushes at the site of a
colliery disaster in Leigh, Greater Manchester. Most of the phenomena seem
benign, but several roads have a reputation for figures which appear to run
into the path of traffic.

The motorway hauntings are expected to grow, according to experts like Mr
Devereux, who recorded his own encounter with a phantom pick-up truck on the
M6 in Fortean Times, the journal of strange phenomena. The new M6 toll
section in the Midlands has already attracted a Roman cohort. Sue Cowley,
from Coleshill, Warwickshire, told the survey of seeing about 20 soldiers
"more like upright shadows than men walking through the tarmac as you would
through water."

Top 10 haunts

1 The M6. Multiple hauntings

2 The A9 in the Highlands. Weird coach

3 Platt Lane, Leigh, Manchester. Gleaming eyes

4 High Street and Suffield Road, Great Yarmouth. Phantom dog

5 Gloucester Drive, Finsbury Park, north London. Ghostly kids

6 The B4293 at Devauden, Wales. Angelic voices

7 The B3314 near Tintagel, Cornwall. Victorian woman

8 Loch Dornoch, Highlands. Eerie horseman

9 The B1403 near Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Lone soldier

10 Drews Lane, Ward End, Birmingham. Sound of invisible cars "

/

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 00:38:00 GMT, "Gregory Morrow"
gregorymorrowONACLEARDAYYOUCANSEEALOAFHEAD@earthl ink.net wrote:

For the first time since ghost-hunting became an organised science,

science? I suppose it got "Tarmac" on the Halloween news. I saw the
aurora borealis on the M6 once, that was odd as at first I couldn't
understand what the hell I was looking at.
--
Mike Reid
Wasdale "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk/page01.htm"
(see website for email)

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:12:37 +0000, The Reid
wrote:

... I saw the
aurora borealis on the M6 once, that was odd as at first I couldn't
understand what the hell I was looking at.

You *thought* it was the aurora borealis. It was really Tinkerbell.
--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 17:17:48 +0100, B wrote:

... I saw the
aurora borealis on the M6 once, that was odd as at first I couldn't
understand what the hell I was looking at.

You *thought* it was the aurora borealis. It was really Tinkerbell.

i'd better write to Tarmac.
--
Mike Reid
Wasdale "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk/page01.htm"
(see website for email)