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A ghost is being blamed for a series of car crashes.
Paranormal researchers are investigating the sightings of a girl aged between three and five in Victorian dress who appears late at night near an accident blackspot.
Researcher David Taylor, chairman of the Parasearch group, said: “Although people who reported sightings didn’t actually crash they had to swerve round the apparition.
“It could be an optical illusion of some sort.
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“The area around there is an accident blackspot and there have been some serious incidents, so maybe they had all seen the same thing,” Mr Taylor, who has been investigating paranormal incidents for 22 years, said.
The girl is said to appear on Oldnall Road, between Wollescote and Cradley in the West Midlands, late at night.
“One person said he’d swerved to avoid a child in old-fashioned – possibly Victorian – clothes standing in the middle of the road; and then, when he looked back, there was nothing there,” David added.
Jimmy Lahn, 54, who lives near the road between Wollescote and Cradley in the West Midlands, said: “We’ve had quite a few accidents. Maybe now we know why.”
The team from Parasearch are trying to find out if there are any local stories which could throw light on who the girl is.
A West Midlands Police spokesman said the most recent incidents included a crash involving a motorbike and a car in November while last July a woman was taken to hospital after a collision on the same stretch.
Parasearch is a West Midlands-based research group and is looking into the possibility that the spooky sightings are linked to the area’s nearby archaeological sites such as Wychbury Hill.
Who is the ghost girl?
David Taylor says he cannot say who the girl is but that there’s a local story about an unnamed person being drowned at a farm on the road. The farm no longer exists.
David told Mirror.co.uk there have been reports of several apparitions seen along the road which include: A little girl; a little boy (eight-10 years old in Victorian clothing); a figure in black.
“In all honesty we are probably not talking about the ghost (or apparition as we prefer) as a spirit of the dead, but rather as a reaction to a complex series of stimuli that results in the witnesses having different experiences from the same stimuli, what that stimuli is is the really interesting question!,” David said.
Other ghosts on the road:
Research published in 2007 uncovered a ghoulish list of mysterious stretches of road where unexplained ghostly incidents have been reported…
Here are some of those drivers would do good to heed:
1) Drivers reported running over a phantom beauty, thought to be the ghost of a tragic bridesmaid killed in a 1960s car crash on Blue Bell Hill, Aylesford in Kent.
2) Motorists heard the powerful engine of a 1920s Brough Superior motorcycle speeding around the country lanes of Clouds Hill near Wareham, in Dorset, followed by a screech of tyres and an eerie silence. Nobody has seen the rider, said to be World War One hero T.E. Lawrence (better known as Lawrence of Arabia), killed in a motorbike accident near the spot.
3) An old Austin 1100, without a driver, seen speeding along a bleak cliff-top road at dawn on the Hebridean island of Benbecula which simply vanishes whenever any attempt is made to follow it.
4) Allegedly, at least three people have died and many more been injured by ‘The Phantom Lorry of Cheshire’ which stalks the Hyde to Mottram road. As far back as February 1930 the shadowy truck has been blamed for causing drivers to crash by suddenly emerging out of a non-existent opening by the side of the road.
5) Between Blandford and Salisbury, in Wiltshire, mystified motorists claim to have seen phantom wreckage by the side of the road and heard the screams and groans of crash victims. Others have reported the ghostly-face of a man and felt an icy cold touch before looking down to see a severed bloody hand on the ground.
6) On foggy nights between the village of Aberhowy and Cardigan Bay, Wales, the ghost of a cyclist guides people along the dangerous road. The spectre is said to be a local man who lost his son in a car accident on a misty night and now tries to prevent a similar tragedy.
7) A gruesome pair of hairy, calloused hands that are inhumanly strong have been reported to grab the wheel of cars or handlebars of motorcycles travelling along the narrow Dartmoor roads near Postbridge and Princetown, in Devon, and do their utmost to fight you off the road.
The story has been repeated many times since its first suggested incident in June 1921 when a worker at Dartmoor Prison was killed as his motorcycle became uncontrollable and crashed.
(Research by car data checking company mycarcheck.com.)
The Parasearch team uses three main theories to guide its research
Geology & Geomagnetism
Canadian scientist Dr Michael Persinger undertook a massive study which seemed to show that:
Persinger found that paranormal activity, from ghosts to UFOs was more likely to occur near to geological faults, themselves centres of geomagnetic activity. Parasearch checks the local geology of the area being investigated to see if the phenomena being reported could be caused by geomagnetic activity.
Electromagnetic Hotspots
There are thought to be links between electromagnetic hotspots and the appearance of ghostly phenomena. Researcher and author Albert Budden found witnesses to paranormal activity are likely to:
1) Live near high levels of electromagnetic activity (pylons etc)
2) Have been involved in an electromagnetic discharge (lightning strike etc) Parasearch use specialist equipment to detect man-made electromagnetic fields.
Infrasound
Infrasound refers to extreme bass waves or vibrations, those with a frequency below the audibility range of the human ear (20 Hz to 22 kHz). Even though these waves can’t be heard by us, they can be felt and have been shown to produce a range of effects in some people including anxiety, extreme sorrow, and chills. Pioneering research by the late Vic Tandy of Coventry University suggested that infrasound could be a contributing factor in ghostly experiences
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