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Ford Anglia

At sixteen years old, Martin bought a dilapidated 1963 Ford Anglia and installed it in his parents' garage where he intended to restore it ready for his seventeenth birthday. Not having been used for five years, the car was in very poor condition: flat tyres, rusted metalwork, stiff hinges, damaged chrome, torn upholstery and fabric lining, seized brakes - and all this before even looking in the engine compartment which was in no better condition.

After ten months Martin had virtually transformed the car. He had worked on it most evenings and weekends, had spent a good deal of money buying replacement parts and now, only two thrown its brakes on although in both cases the passengers were also impressed by the drivers' apparent sincerity. There have been reports of a similar highwayman figure from other people in the area although they are less well corroborated. There has been some speculation as to why only the drivers should see the figure and not the passengers and it has been suggested that it is the degree of concentration on the road which creates a minor 'altered state of consciousness' in the driver whilst the other passengers remain marginally more relaxed.

To explain away one such apparition as 'highway hypnosis' is in fact popular with sceptics whereas this case of two different reports of a very similar figure at the same location would seem to suggest more than that. Rather than the apparition being a product of highway hypnosis, perhaps highway hypnosis itself creates a state where a genuine external event can be perceived as a result of the altered state of consciousness. Interestingly, the vast majority of lonely road at night UFO sightings also tend to occur just after the car has turned a bend, as was the case in these highwaymen reports.

Why these types of events should be so frequently perceived 'from the corner of the eye' by so wide a variety of people throws up important questions about their objective reality. Were it possible to put it to the test, it would be interesting to discover the predispositions of these witnesses, and whether they are genuinely seeing a highwayman in some cases and a UFO in others, or whether all the witnesses are seeing 'something' which, though genuinely external to the percipient, is nonetheless interpreted differently according to the set of the percipient's own mind. months from his seventeenth birthday, the only area still needing real attention was the electrical system.

Martin had a close friend, Stephen, and they would go out together on Stephen's motorbike. This was of great concern to Martin's parents who had in fact been very relieved that Martin had chosen a car rather than a motorbike for himself. However, it seemed apparent that Martin's real attention was focused on the car which he would soon be able to drive and so they allowed Martin his days out as a reward for the hard work he was putting in. Tragically, one Saturday afternoon the couple were informed by the police of a disastrous road accident in which Stephen had been critically injured and Martin killed.For several weeks Martin's parents were in a state of numb shock.

They were shortly due to fly to Spain for a previously booked holiday, and they were debating whether or not to go and also what they were going to do about Martin's car. Martin's mother was adamant that it should not be sold as it represented something of their lost son. As the holiday approached they became aware that for the past three nights they had been hearing vague sounds of banging and shuffling from inside the garage - of course it could not be Martin who was dead. When they really focused their attention on the sounds they would stop. On one night when they heard the sounds Martin's mother was so distraught that his father ran to the garage to see what was happening.

As he opened the garage door he heard what he was certain was the sound of a spanner being dropped on the concrete. It was dark inside the garage and he turned on the light. He searched thoroughly but there was no one there, and no spanner or other tool on the floor. One mystery was that the car's engine compartment was open, though Martin's father was sure Martin would have closed it as he always did when he had been working on the car. Martin's father closed the car bonnet and left the garage. For several evenings between six-thirty and nine o'clock they continued to hear the sounds of work inside the garage but whenever they investigated there was nothing to see. Sleepless and distraught, they decided that they would take their holiday in Spain and they returned feeling more refreshed .

On their return the next-door neighbours told them that they had been concerned about the loud and almost feverish sound of car repairs coming from the garage in their absence. Lights had been on in both the garage and the house. The neighbour had believed that perhaps the family had cancelled the holiday in order to finish the car in time for their son's birthday, possibly as some kind of tribute, but when they realised that that was not the case they had called out the police three times to check for intruders though none were ever found. The last time the police had arrived the garage light had been on and the car could be seen through the small garage window with its engine compartment open.

Martin's father had no doubt in his mind whatsoever that the engine compartment had been closed when he left for Spain. Martin's toolboxes, which had been stored under the workbench, were now sitting together on top of the workbench. On Martin's birthday the couple were understandably upset. In the early afternoon, suddenly, they heard the sound of a car engine starting up in the garage and when they rushed out to see what was going on, the Ford Anglia was sitting there with its engine purring. When Martin's father reached in to turn off the ignition he discovered the keys were not in the lock, they were hanging on a hook on the workbench. Confused and unable to understand what was happening, Martin's father telephoned the local garage asking for someone to come and inspect the vehicle.

For approximately a quarter of an hour the Anglia's engine continued to run then suddenly it faltered and stopped. At this point the already very distraught mother thought she saw Martin at the back of the garage and heard him say, 'Look Mum, I've done it!' She accepted that this could have been a trick of her imagination, upset as she was.

The mechanic from the garage arrived and explained that the car must have started by a short circuit in the ignition wires, but he could not understand why it should stop since there was adequate fuel for it to keep running. However, some of the ignition wires were not even connected and the choke cable was hanging on the workbench. The haunting of the garage stopped after that day. Some time . later the car was sold to one of Martin's friends who discovered that he only needed to connect up the ignition wires and choke cable in order to start the car which then ran perfectly.

Martin's parents now accept that the car was started by their son's ghost and indeed have since recognised the significance of it starting up at five past two in the afternoon on Martin's birthday, this being the exact time of his birth. According to Professor Colin Gardner of the Institute for Psychical Research - who investigated the case and wrote it up in the book Ghost Watch -the Institute had been alerted to this story by a neighbour from across the road who had watched a ghost leave the front door of Martin's house and pass through the closed garage door.

One popular theory of ghosts first suggested by Sir Oliver Lodge in Man and the Universe at the beginning of the century, is that ghosts are like a tape-recording replaying some event in the person's life which is witnessed by others in another time. However, this case would seem to indicate a development from what had happened during Martin's life involving Martin's active participation. Since the recording theory has much to be said for it (many ghosts do appear to different witnesses doing exactly the same thing over and over) this story at least suggests that explanations of hauntings may be a little more varied. Doncaster |