The Ghosts of Blue Bell Hill & other Road Ghosts (The Ghosts of Blue Bell Hill: and Other Road Ghosts: A Case-Centred Study of Phantom Hitch-Hikers & Phantom Jaywalkers in Folklore and Fact)

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The main road linking Medway and Maidstone has been the topic of many ghostly sightings over the years, and it all started back in 1965. Joseph Chester and Tracy Boon both reported seeing a young woman wearing a nightgown on separate occasions in 1968 and 1999. It is believed this ghost is that of 22-year-old bride Suzanne Browne, who was killed with two friends in a road traffic accident near the bridge over the Old Chatham Road on the eve of her wedding on November 19, 1965. The father swore he would rather the ‘Devil’ took his daughter than have them meet again – which they did and the Devil appeared, chasing the terrified couple across the moor. The film also contains scenes based on reports of a young woman appearing suddenly in the road at night.

The same year, the ‘beast of Blue Bell Hill’ was photographed – though apparently on the wrong side of the river.This haunting can be attributed to the dreadful accident that befell three young women, Susan Browne, Judith Lingham and Patricia Fergeuson, on the night of 19 November 1965. Kit’s Coty sits alone looking over the downs, unloved and barely signposted, the constant drone of traffic ever present but blocked from view by shreds of woodland. These events show an affinity with the legendary Phantom Hitch-Hiker, suggesting that far from being mere vestiges of a superstitious folk tradition, they may reflect a genuine but complex phenomenon that continues to manifest in modern times and settings, and challenges our very notions of reality. I was so scared to look underneath, but I knelt and looked straight through – there was nothing there”.

It holds a much greater degree of fame for its variation on the phantom hitchhiker myth that manifests itself all over the world. I don’t really believe in ghosts; the persistence of human imagination in these unlikely places is what is of most importance. The chains of his faithful horse, Black Bess, is also said to be heard clinking around outside in the early hours. The fact that it was a girl, her appearance in the vicinity of the 1965 crash, her vanishing after the incident, and the fact Goodenough’s car wasn’t damaged, all point to this conclusion. Over the years the site has been linked to a number of occurrences where drivers have reported either: picking up a female hitchhiker who subsequently disappears from the car; or hitting a female pedestrian, whose body cannot be subsequently found.

I never believed in such nonsense until I see one in my old house of a woman in my bedroom I legged it downstairs and couldn’t get the words out to tell my husband it is something I will never forget in my lifetime and that’s the truth . I come from that area and knew about the ghost but didn’t tell her about the ghosts She pointed it out to me and got me to check her camera out. Choked with exhaust fumes amid the rumbling of several lanes of traffic, it takes a degree of mental effort to imagine the area as anything other than a place to drive through.

Neil Arnold runs Blue Bell Hill ghost tours and wrote Kent Urban Legends: The Phantom Hitchhiker and Other Stories. When they arrived at the address, the two men were astonished to discover that their passenger was no longer in the car.But it also runs chillingly close to Pretoria Pit, the site of one of the most devastating mining disasters in Britain’s history. There are various ghost stories associated with Bluebell Hill, on the A20/M20 just west of Maidstone, Kent. If you're running a script or application, please register or sign in with your developer credentials here. Halfway into the journey, they glance back at their passenger and are startled and shocked to see that no one else is in the car with them.