Antony Milne - Haunted Cars and Highways

[dem bones]

Antony Milne - Haunted Cars and Highways: The definitive account of paranormal events on Britain's roads (Empiricus/ Janus Publishing, 2019)

Cover design: Barry Small

Author's Note
Preface

Britain's Haunted Roads
Liminal Places and Sacred Borders
The Legacy of Haunted Landscapes
Landscape Ghosts
Phantom Stagecoaches and Horsemen
The Reality of Spooky Cars
Phantom Cars Across Britain
Premonitions and Omens
'Saved by Angels'
The Vanishing Hitchhiker Legends
The Phantom Jaywalker
Dangerous Phantoms Across Britain
Female Road Ghosts
The Blue Bell Hill Legend
High Strangeness on the Highways
Beware Fairies on the Road
The Alien Black Cat Sightings
The Wolf-like Apparitions
The Car-chasing Orbs
The 'Car-stop' Phenomenon
Ufos - The Police get Involved
Epilogue

Notes

Blurb:
In this remarkable book Antony Milne describes in detail the High Strangeness of Britain's haunted landscape. Motorists report alarming apparitions from the past, such as highwaymen and horse-drawn coaches, all looking solid and real, travelling along roads that no longer exist. Recklessly speeding cars and trucks appear out of nowhere, only to vanish at the last moment. Female hitchhikers unaccountably disappear from the back seats of cars, and strange characters frighten motorists by rushing out and colliding with their vehicles, only for their bodies never to be found, and which become road ghosts for other drivers to run over. The author lists the peculiar creatures and entities that are recorded in county paranormal databases: tales of huge black cats the size of pumas and large unknown species of wolf-like dogs, plus hovering Ufos that cause car engines to dangerously cut out.

This book will be an invaluable source for ghost hunters, Ufologists and those who believe - and know that the paranormal world does co-exist with our own real world. Those who do not believe this will one day, out driving, be confronted with this horrible reality.

Current non-fiction on the go. Think we can safely say the author really intended this study to be comprehensive. Initially, the closest comparison I could think of was a post-internet update on the aforementioned The Ghost Hunter's Road Book — fleshed out with content collated from multiple online paranormal databases, Fortean Times, Chat — It's Fate, Fate and Fortune, etc., — but even that is hardly to do him justice. Aside from usual suspects - vanishing hitch-hikers, headless cyclists, spectral jaywalkers, the Kensington ghost bus, etc - Mr. Milne throws in death cars, suicide nuns, UFO's, Angels, orbs, alien big cats, fairies ...

[Swampirella]

At almost 400 pages, it certainly is 'comrephensive" and first-rate!

[dem bones]

Apr 19, 2024 19:23:12 GMT Swampirella said:

At almost 400 pages, it certainly is 'comrephensive" and first-rate!

Among his several go to sources, Paul Tudor's The Ghosts of Blue Bell Hill & other Road Ghosts (White Ladies Press, 2017)- have you read it?

Kent Evening Post, 19 July 1974

Predictably, the 'dangerous phantoms' are among the more entertaining — at least they are for me, anyhow. "Suffolk seems to have been quite heavily populated by [phantom] monks. At Thornham Parva in 1975, a cyclist passed two hooded monks in white. They actually greeted him, but he was shocked to find that their hoods were empty. At Wickham Market, near Putsford Wood on the B1078, in the 1980s, a truck driver who stopped for a call of nature near a plaque marking an old hangman's gibbet was tapped on the shoulder by a skeletal form in robes and hood. Later, in 1997, at the same place - near the plaque and gibbet - a couple whose car broke down one night were harassed by a shapeless object that approached their vehicle."

[Swampirella]

Among his several go to sources, Paul Tudor's The Ghosts of Blue Bell Hill & other Road Ghosts (White Ladies Press, 2017)- have you read it?

Yes, of course I have a copy! It's equally good and another hefty tome of over 500pgs.

[dem bones]

Apr 22, 2024 15:56:03 GMT Swampirella said:

Yes, of course I have a copy! It's equally good and another hefty tome of over 500pgs.

Thought you would. That's another added to stupid "wants list."

Another of the author's sources is Mike Goss's The Evidence for Phantom Hitch-hikers which, fortunately, I've read and much appreciate. Goss is brilliant on the history of Spring-heeled Jack sighting's, too, if a little critical of Peter Haining's "research."

Back with Haunted Cars & Highways, one for friend Ripper.

"The Cannock Chase is twenty-six square miles of woodland and heath south-east of Stafford. A Caroline Parks, at midnight in February 2010, almost crashed her car on a stretch of road between Hednesford and Rugeley when she had to swerve to avoid hitting a figure that materialised virtually in front of her. Through her rear window she could see a translucent figure with bright yellow eyes in a long coat and brimmed hat. It looked, as in so many cases, as if its feet were not actually touching the ground. It disappeared into the surrounding woodland. Her uncle had apparently had a similar experience in the past when out on his bike. The same sort of figure just floated up into the air when approached. In the year 2012 five other sightings of this black, hovering apparition were reported."