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B392 Hitchhiker

There is no shortage of legends and paranormal reports from the Wiltshire, Avon and Somerset area in the south of England: UFOs and more recently corn-field circles in the hills around Warminster, Arthurian tales around Glastonbury and so on.

The area also boasts its own phantom hitchhiker and a small country road from Frome to Nunney some ten miles west of Warminster has provided the location. The witness (who prefers his name to be withheld) was driving on the Frome-Nunney road in August 1977 when he stopped to give a man a lift. The hitchhiker got into the back seat of the car and the witness locked the car doors. There was very little communication between the two, the most telling point being the hitchhiker's comment that it was cold. But when the witness asked his passenger a question he discovered that the reason he was receiving no response was because no one was in the car, yet he was certain the car door had not been opened during the drive.

The witness reported the incident to Frome police station where, perhaps not unreasonably, he was breathalysed but found to be sober. Indeed he was described by the police as 'a highly distraught motorist' and they also accepted that, 'We have had people coming here in a state of virtual hysteria,' in connection with other reports of the phantom hitchhiker. The police, however, keep their feet firmly on the ground and point out that their own patrol cars travel these roads frequently but have not been involved in any phantom hitchhiker incidents. The story takes a most unusual twist at this point. There are many 'repeater' phenomena in the paranormal and in particular people who see many ghosts or who experience many UFO events, but there are very few cases of people who experience more than one phantom hitchhiker event.

Yet this witness was to provide a second report concerning the same stretch of road sometime after the first event. The second encounter was quite unlike the first. In the second encounter the witness came across the hitchhiker standing in the middle of the road and skidded to avoid an accident, hitting either a lamp post, a telegraph pole or a hedge depending on the report. Needless to say, when the witness searched the area for the cause of the problem no trace of him could be found. As a phantom hitchhiker account this does differ from the archetypal story in which the hitchhiker tends to be purely benevolent.

Whereas many phantoms seem driven to get into cars and admonish the drivers for reckless driving, or save their lives by giving them a quick reminder of the Highway Code, the Frome-Nunney phantom seems to have graduated to actually trying to cause an accident that could have ended up with the witness and the phantom swapping insurance details on the 'other side'! The story was to take a turn for the bizarre when building-society manager Ron Macey, who was organising the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebrations in the local area, decided to turn ghostbuster.

Concerned that the local celebration should not be harmed by the phantom hitchhiker keeping people away, or possibly even with an eye to the potential benefits of publicity the ghost might bring, a series of ghost patrols were set up to investigate the events. It does not appear to have been a serious attempt at psychical research and adds very little to the overall understanding of this case. Unfortunately, as a result of the publicity, at least one driver encountered a floating white ghost with a huge grin - in this case flapping from the trees on strings (the product of very down to earth clowning about). Candidates for the Frome-Nunney phantom have not been lacking; suggestions have included the victims of Judge Jeffrey's public hangings nearby, an American serviceman killed in a car crash and a husband wrongly hanged for his wife's murder.

In August 1991 we contacted Frome police station to find out whether or not they had had any recent reports; the policewoman on duty said that she had been there for two and a half years and although she had heard of the local legend she was certain that there had been no police reports filed on it during her time there. Bedfordshire | France | Somerset | South Africa |