Haunted highways & spooky streets: 10 of the UK's most daunting drives

Spooks, spectres and hairy hands - dare you drive on Britain's most ghostly roads?

 Fancy taking a road trip to visit the things that go bump in the dark?

Whether you're a horror aficionado, and love to freak yourself out until you have to go to bed with the big light still on, or you're a little more like me, and can only just about cope with the horrifying 'heffalumps and woozles' scene from the iconic The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh, there's undeniably something quite exciting about taking a trip to a place notorious for its ghosties and ghoulies.

There's no feeling quite like the little frisson of excitement that accompanies the tense unknown as you walk/drive/wheel/crawl through a dark space, unsure of what might be around the corner. It's similar to when you used to play hide-and-seek as a child and the anxiety-inducing wait for the seeker.

Dial that up a notch this Halloween, and take yourself off across the country for some ghostly safari.

Whether you fancy taking a road trip to a notorious castle, or you want to brave Britain's most haunted roads in the hopes of glimpsing a phantom for yourself, there's something for everyone.

Unless you really, really hate ghosts, ghouls, spectres, and beasts.

In which case, take this as a 'where not to go' guide, and plan your long-distance journeys accordingly.

But if you're feeling a little brave, load up your lease car and head on out. Who knows what you might see?!

1. Pluckley Village, Kent

Whether it’s something to do with the folk stories embedded in our collective psyche, or watching too many episodes of Midsommer Murders at a very formative age, there’s something about driving through winding lanes and a quaint English village that inspires a weird kind of terror.

Especially on autumnal mornings when the fog lies low across the valleys, shrouding the church spire and rooftops in a hazy mist and hiding the countryside from view.

And especially when that village is Pluckley Village.

It holds the title of the most haunted village in Kent – which, unlike my village which won Village of the Year in 2001, isn’t quite the accolade you might perhaps want for your home – and is supposedly home to over 12 ghosts that hang around the place in a vaguely haunting, foreboding manner.

In fact, it’s even in the Guinness Book of Records because of its ghostly inhabitants. Which, if you don’t have to cohabit with them, is quite cool.

The ghosts of Pluckley Village include a highway man hiding in a tree, a phantom coach (complete with ghostly horses), a miller at Mill Hill, a schoolmaster hanging in Dicky Buss’ Lane, a man who drowned at a brickworks, the Lady of Rose Court who is said to have poisoned herself after becoming entangled in a love triangle, the White Lady haunting the inside of St Nicholas’ Church, and the Red Lady and her white dog who haunt the churchyard.

Wherever you go in Pluckley, there’s likely to be a ghost.

If you’re feeling especially brave, hop in your car and brave the drive through Screaming Woods.

While not it’s official name (that would be Dering Woods, after the Dering family), it’s still very apt. Think the nickname is just an eerie exaggeration? Think again.

Locals have said that they’ve heard long-lost souls wailing through the fog-clouded trees, while others have reported an overwhelming sense of being watched. Some have even seen black shadows following them, and ghostly figures appear through the woods, disappearing if you get too close.

2. A75 Kinmount Straight, Scotland

Otherwise known as the ‘Ghost Road’ – always a good start.

The Kinmount Straight is often called the most haunted road in Scotland, and has been the site of numerous bizarre sightings over the last 50 years. 

Drivers have reported spying everything from people to carriages to animals on the road, with some figures stepping out in front of cars, only to disappear before the moment of impact.

One famous sighting came from the Ferguson brothers, who witnessed an alarming variety of phenomena on their drive down the Ghost Road, including the ghost of an older lady who ran towards them with her arms outstretched, a screaming man and several different ghostly beasts.

Still want to brave the Kinmount Straight at night?

Well, if you’re as unlucky as another couple, you too might witness a man stood by the roadside with a sack over his head. The pair, worried that they’d hit him, turned around to check that he was alright. But when they got back to the place where they’d spied him standing, the man was gone.

In fact, a man named Bob Sturgeon, who previously ran a roadside snack van close to the ‘sighting hotspot’, has said that he rarely went a week without someone reporting an unusual and spooky occurrence to him. The most common sighting, according to Bob, was a group of bedraggled people pulling carts or carrying bundles. 

One lorry driver was so traumatised by his experience on the Kinmount Straight that he apparently gave up on lorry driving altogether.

Fancy giving it a go yourself? Do report back to us if you see anything.

3. Blue Bell Hill, Kent

Winding up through the beautiful chalk hills of Kent, Blue Bell Hill has a notorious reputation that belies its quite gentle and not-spooky-at-all name.

This innocuous stretch of road is home to the ghost of a young woman, clad all in white.

Legend has it – though as ever, the legend is slightly wrong – that this ghost is all that remains of Judith Langham, who died in a car crash in 1965 before her wedding day.

However, the ghost is actually that of her friend, Suzanne Brown, who was the actual bride-to-be. She was 22 years old, and she had been out celebrating her hen night with her two friends, Judith Langham and Patricia Ferguson, when disaster struck the happy occasion. 

As the threesome drove up Blue Bell Hill, Suzanne’s Ford Cortina span out of control and collided with the oncoming traffic, killing Patricia almost instantly. Suzanne and Judith initially survived the crash, only to pass away in hospital a few days later. 

Sightings of Suzanne have been reported ever since that fateful night, with some reporting that they’d picked her up from the side of the road, only for the woman to disappear without a trace, while others have spotted her crossing the road and vanishing into thin air.

But the legend of Suzanne and her friends is not the only one to plague the road.

Sightings of ghostly apparitions have been reported on Blue Bell Hill as far back as the 1930s. With the hill being the site of a Neolithic burial chamber, we’re not surprised some spirits have hung around to cause havoc.

4. B3212, Dartmoor, Devon

This one is a little closer to home for us, with Carparison HQ being situated on the outskirts of Exeter.

And believe us when we say there’s no way we’d go bombing down this road in the dark. Or at the very least, I wouldn’t. You’ll never forget where you were when you were first told of the legend of the hairy hands – and I was camping on Dartmoor, sat around a campfire. It turned an already spooky tale into one of nightmares.

In fact, I think I’ll avoid that road even in the daylight.

You can never be too safe.

The B3212, for those not in know, runs from just west of Exeter, all the way to Yelverton, cutting through rugged terrain and passing by stone tors, ruins, cairns and mysterious stone circles that date back to the Bronze Age.

But the stretch of road that we’re interested in starts at Postbridge and finishes at Princetown, home to Dartmoor’s prison.

It’s here that the ‘Hairy Hands’ have plagued drivers for generations, with the first reports dating back to the 1900s. The 1910s saw a spate of accidents, with those involved allegedly having lost control of their vehicle. 1921 saw the tragic death of E.H Helby, a respected medical officer at the nearby prison, who crashed his motorcycle on a journey to Postbridge.

Thankfully, the two girls who were riding in his sidecar survived the incident, and were able to report that Helby had shouted at the pair to jump out as he wrestled an unseen force to maintain control.

Another motorcyclist reported a similar incident a few years later, but this time the pillion passenger said they clearly saw a pair of disembodied hands wrest control of the bike. 

Ever since, there have been hundreds of reports along the same lines, all encountering the same ownerless hands. 

Could you think of anything worse than some hairy hands, no known owner, appearing on your steering wheel? No. We couldn’t either.

(Though there are many locals sceptical of this legend, believing instead that the numerous accidents are the result of tourists driving a little too fast on narrow lanes that they don’t know. And to that we say, spoilsports.)

5. M6 Motorway

If we said to you ‘picture a haunted road’, you might not immediately jump to thinking of a motorway. 

In fact, it’s likely not even on your list. Motorways are so new and so, well, motorwayish, how could they possibly be haunted?

Spanning all the way from Rugby to Carlisle, the M6 is one of the busiest (and potentially worst to be trapped on) roads in the UK. But it’s also the site of numerous paranormal sightings, and has been since it was first opened in 1958. 

You’ll be used to some of these reports by now. Ghosts that dart across the road, only to vanish when they hit the other side, spectral animals, spooky figures, glowing eyes, all the run-of-the-mill hauntings that plague sites where the veil between our world and the next is a little thinner.

But did you know that the M6 loosely follows an ancient Roman road that allowed soldiers passage through England and into Scotland?

However, it appears that someone forgot to tell a group of these soldiers that Rome fell in the fifth century, and the Romans swiftly left our beloved isle afterwards.

If you’re unlucky – or lucky, depending on which way you look at it – you might see these soldiers still marching onwards, endlessly doomed to repeat their last march before falling in battle, repeating their steps time and time again.

Of course, the old Roman road is now well below the newer tarmac, but physics is no real barrier to these centurions, and you’ll see them wading through the concrete like they’re marching through water.

There are several theories about this inexplicable happening. Some believe that yes, these soldiers are marching to battle or that the road itself was the site of several bloody conflicts, while others have said that this section of the road was built on a Roman burial ground.

Either way, it turns out that the toll charge isn’t the scariest thing about taking a trip along the M6.

6. Bodmin Moor, Cornwall

Moorland really does just lend itself to spooky tales.

Whichever moor you find yourself on, there’s sure to be some ghost or ghoul or apparition close by, ready to scare the pants off of you.

And Bodmin Moor is no exception.

But it’s not regular old human ghosts that haunt this moor. Bodmin Moor is instead home to something a little, well, different.

It’s home to the Beast of Bodmin Moor, a creature that no one has ever been able to pin down, despite numerous sightings and local legend springing up around it.

Since 1978, there have been over 60 reports of a large cat-like creature loose on the moor that have baffled local police, and left experts stumped. There are many theories surrounding the beast, spanning everything from the beast being a supernatural entity, to it being an escaped wild animal.

A string of mutilated livestock did nothing to dispel the rumour, while the grainy photographs and video footage that people have been able to capture isn’t good enough to make a conclusion either way. Even a government investigation in 1995 was careful to say that, while there was no evidence that the beast existed, there was nothing to say it didn’t, either.

The most concrete hypotheses centre around the beast having escaped from a nearby private collection or zoo.

There was a lady named Mary Chipperfield, a ‘70s circus entertainer, who released three pumas into the wild after her zoo closed in 1978 (the very same year the beast was first spotted), while Dartmouth Zoo claimed in 2016 that there was a different pack of pumas released in the ‘80s. 

Whether the beast is made of flesh or myth, if you see a pair of glowing eyes in the darkness, we suggest a swift U-turn and drive back the way you came. 

Fast.

7. Alnwick Castle – Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland

Less of a spooky road and more of a ghost road trip, taking in two of England’s most haunted castles for some extra special seasonal vibes, both Alnwick Castle and Bamburgh Castle are well worth the visit.

And being only half an hour apart, up the B6431/A1 and onto the B1341 at Adderstone services, you can easily tick them both off in a day and then recount your ghostly experiences to your friends.

Start at Alnwick Castle, said to be Northumberland’s spookiest spot (although you might recognise it from a certain, wildly popular series of films about a certain young wizard). It’s home to the legend of the Alnwick Vampire, and hundreds of years of gruesome, ghoulish tales. 

The legend of this northern vampire has been knocking around since the twelfth century, when chronicler William de Newburgh in his Historia rerum Anglicarum, tells the tale of a man who worked in the castle, serving the lord at the time. This man, suspecting his wife of cheating on him, climbed to the very top of the castle to catch her in the act but, instead, tragically fell to his death from the rooftop.

Despite having a full Christian burial, the man could not rest in peace, and haunted the townsfolk instead, terrifying the locals as unexplained illness spread and livestock perished. 

To rid the town of this ‘bloodsucker’, as de Newburgh coined him (the first recorded use of the word), two men took it upon themselves to unbury the man, take him to the outskirts of town, and burn his corpse. It was only then that the supposed curse lifted from the town, and the plague that had run rampant through the town.

The legend of the Alnwick Vampire has persisted ever since, thrilling and delighting those brave enough to visit.

And he’s not the only one! Visitors to the castle have reported seeing the ghost of the Grey Lady when walking through tunnels deep below the castle. She is believed to be the spirit of a young teenage Victorian girl who tragically fell down a chute to her death while working as a maid in the castle. She was crushed by a dumbwaiter, and has roamed the tunnels ever since.

When you’ve had your fill of the supernatural at Alnwick, hop in your lease car and head up the road to Bamburgh.

It’s here you might encounter the Pink Lady, along with several other ghosts. She’s believed to be the ghost of a young woman who is still desperately searching for her long-lost love.

In life, the Pink Lady was a Northumbrian princess, desperately in love with a man her father didn’t approve of. He banished the suitor overseas for seven years, and told his daughter that he had married someone else.  To cheer her up, he had the castle seamstress make her a dress in her favourite colour, pink.

The girl donned the dress, climbed the stairs, and threw herself off the battlements to the rocks below.

Ever since, the princess has wandered the castle, awaiting the return of her lost love.

Though perhaps the most famous Bamburgh ghost, she’s not the only one. You might also see Green Jane, the spirit of a starving woman clad in an emerald cloak who was sent to beg for food at the castle and instead fell down the steps to her death, along with the baby in her arms. 

There is also the ghost of Dr John Sharp, the man who oversaw the restoration of the castle in the eighteenth century and is said to have loved it so much that he’s never left, and is regularly seen by visitors who recognise him from the portrait of Dr Sharp hanging in the King’s Hall.

8. Pendle Hill, Lancashire

Anyone who knows their witchcraft history will know of Pendle Hill.

It’s the site of perhaps the most famous English witch trials, and is home to the restless spirits of those who were executed for witchcraft in the seventeenth century, right at the peak of the witch hunt craze.

Located in East Lancashire, near Burnley, it’s attracted visitors from far and wide thanks to its spooky atmosphere and the legends that surround it. The area around Pendle isn’t just home to the legend of the witches who have embedded themselves into the folklore and history of Pendle, either.

It’s said that, according to ancient legend, the Devil himself once jumped from Hameldon Hill on the southwest slope, leaving his footprints behind. For some reason, he gathered rocks into the apron that he was wearing (and this is where we begin to be a little dubious – why was the Devil wearing an apron? For jam making? We’re not entirely sold).

He threw a boulder towards Clitheroe Castle, but the string of the apron broke, and the boulder instead landed near Pendleton, creating the pile of rocks that you’ll find there.

Legends of the devil aside, most people visit the area to find out more about the witches, and to try and communicate with their restless spirits.

It’s well worth a visit, the surrounding countryside still untamed and wild, fuelling the mystery of those hanged for witchcraft.

9. A666, Greater Manchester

Listen, sometimes they just write themselves.

Of course the A666 has become known as the ‘Devil’s Highway’, known for its ghostly goings-on. There was no way a road named for the number of the beast would be a pleasant, quiet place to trundle on down in the broad daylight of spring. 

No.

This is a road built for the depths of autumn.

In fact, we’re a little surprised that a road was even given the 666 number. We thought it would be more like when, in a hotel or on a ship, there is no room numbered 13 – just in case.

But the A666, traversing the West Pennine moors and taking in some bleak and rugged countryside, definitely exists, and has been the site of numerous reports of ‘dark shadows’ that lurk there at night, shocking both drivers and passengers. 

The most notorious stretch of this road, officially called St Peter’s Way, is the 5.5 mile stretch from Egerton to Darwen, which holds the title of being a renowned accident blackspot. Not exactly what you’d want to be known as, as a respectable road. According to the data, there are triple the volume of accidents in that spot than anywhere else on the road. 

Whether it’s down to a badly laid out road or something a little more supernatural, we’ll leave that up to you to decide.

10. Electric Brae, Ayrshire

Less spooky and more ‘woah, that’s so cool!’, Electric Brae has been the subject of some speculation for decades.

Its actual name is Croe Brae (brae being the Celtic word for a slope or hillside), and it stretches a quarter of a mile from the bend overlooking the Croy railway viaduct in the west, to Craigencroy Glen in the east.

And its not spectres or spirits you’re looking out for here.

Instead, travellers have been left mystified by the fact that a stationary vehicle, if left to freewheel, will roll up the hill, seemingly defying every law of physics to exist, and even those that don’t.

Locals once believed this to be the work of mischievous and pretty benign spirits who used electromagnetic forces to propel vehicles up the hill, and it became known as a paranormal hotspot. People travelled for miles to experience the weird sensation for themselves, not believing it until the saw it.

But the actual explanation is, well, a little dull.

You see, you don’t actually freewheel uphill at all. Instead, the hill slopes down. It’s known as a gravity hill, and it’s the placing of the surrounding landscape that gives you the sensation of going up. A little like when you’re sat on a stationary train, and the train pulling away beside you makes you feel like you’re moving too.

Though there is logic behind this one, it’s still well worth a visit for the feeling of rolling uphill.