Oh, well lookee here—if it ain’t another Frightday come shambling all mad-eyed and foamy-mawed from amid the swirling mists of the week's horror to shiver your spine and set your teeth all a-chatterin’ with fear. Also, it’s nearly Hallowe’en, by Jove! (I'm glad that I'm managing to write these intros without straying into silliness.)
This tale involves a ‘road ghost’. If you believe the reports, there are plenty of haunted roads in the UK—phantom hitch-hikers that seem normal until they vanish from the back seat; apparitions that manifest in the middle of the road and force motorists to swerve; there is even one tale of a pair of spectral, disembodied hands that appear out of nowhere and grab your steering wheel*. Anyway, onto today's tale. I'm in a rush with work so, I've written this up quickly and haven't had a chance to give it a thorough proofread - apologies in advance for errors.
A short time before Christmas in 2002, when the evenings draw in quickly and the cold air nips at the flesh of the living, a police switchboard was lit up by a number of calls from concerned motorists travelling along the A3 at a place called Burpham, near Guildford in Surrey. It turned out that a group of them had witnessed a car with its headlights on leave the road abruptly and plunge down a steep, overgrown embankment.
Officers were immediately dispatched to investigate what sounded like an everyday accident, but were stumped when they could find no sign of the vehicle in question. There were no tyre marks on the road nor was there any flattened foliage or smashed branches that might have given away the location of a car’s passage. When dawn broke the following morning, a more in-depth search was undertaken and it was then that the police found what seemed to be the vehicle in question, however, not all was at it should have been, for the officers uncovered not just the wreckage of a crashed car, but also a grisly mystery.
Twenty metres from where the motorists’ reports had said it had veered off the road, there lay a dark red Vauxhall Astra. It was nose down in a ditch and almost obscured entirely by trees and brambles—more or less invisible to users of the road above. Although the switches indicated that they had been left on at the time of the crash (as suggested by the witness reports), the headlights were now off thanks to a drained battery. Not too far away from the car lay the unfortunate driver—he was very much deceased. It seemed as though he had survived the crash, but then expired as he tried to drag himself up the embankment in an attempt to get help. But here’s the mysterious part—the driver was already totally decomposed. He was barely more than a skeleton. How could this be, when a multitude of witnesses saw the accident only the evening before?
The driver was identified from his dental records as Christopher Brian Chandler, a 21-year-old (or so), from Isleworth in West London. At the time of his death, Chandler was wanted by the police for his part in an alleged robbery and was last seen in Hounslow before being reported as missing by his brother David in the July of 2002. It’s unclear what had brought him to this part of Surrey.
A police spokesman said at the time:
Had the motorists that saw a car swerve off the road and plough into the undergrowth actually seen some kind of spectral re-enactment of the original accident? We might never find out.
(*This is a story that I read when very young and it’s stayed with me ever since and will hopefully feature in the Hallowe'en Frightday.)
Fancy more creepy reads?
Frightday 1: The Cooper Falling Body Photograph
Frightday 2: What’s your Ghost Name?
Frightday 3: The Mystery of the Chase Coffins
Frightday 4: Robert the Haunted Doll
Frightday 5: The SS Watertown’s Floating Faces
Frightday 6: The Gruesome Mystery of Elisa Lam
Sources
If you like to read about this kind of stuff then I have more on my blog. Sadly, I can’t link to it as it has a few adverts for my books so send me a message via trust and I’ll point you in the right direction (- that's allowed, right?).
This tale involves a ‘road ghost’. If you believe the reports, there are plenty of haunted roads in the UK—phantom hitch-hikers that seem normal until they vanish from the back seat; apparitions that manifest in the middle of the road and force motorists to swerve; there is even one tale of a pair of spectral, disembodied hands that appear out of nowhere and grab your steering wheel*. Anyway, onto today's tale. I'm in a rush with work so, I've written this up quickly and haven't had a chance to give it a thorough proofread - apologies in advance for errors.
A short time before Christmas in 2002, when the evenings draw in quickly and the cold air nips at the flesh of the living, a police switchboard was lit up by a number of calls from concerned motorists travelling along the A3 at a place called Burpham, near Guildford in Surrey. It turned out that a group of them had witnessed a car with its headlights on leave the road abruptly and plunge down a steep, overgrown embankment.
Officers were immediately dispatched to investigate what sounded like an everyday accident, but were stumped when they could find no sign of the vehicle in question. There were no tyre marks on the road nor was there any flattened foliage or smashed branches that might have given away the location of a car’s passage. When dawn broke the following morning, a more in-depth search was undertaken and it was then that the police found what seemed to be the vehicle in question, however, not all was at it should have been, for the officers uncovered not just the wreckage of a crashed car, but also a grisly mystery.
Twenty metres from where the motorists’ reports had said it had veered off the road, there lay a dark red Vauxhall Astra. It was nose down in a ditch and almost obscured entirely by trees and brambles—more or less invisible to users of the road above. Although the switches indicated that they had been left on at the time of the crash (as suggested by the witness reports), the headlights were now off thanks to a drained battery. Not too far away from the car lay the unfortunate driver—he was very much deceased. It seemed as though he had survived the crash, but then expired as he tried to drag himself up the embankment in an attempt to get help. But here’s the mysterious part—the driver was already totally decomposed. He was barely more than a skeleton. How could this be, when a multitude of witnesses saw the accident only the evening before?
The driver was identified from his dental records as Christopher Brian Chandler, a 21-year-old (or so), from Isleworth in West London. At the time of his death, Chandler was wanted by the police for his part in an alleged robbery and was last seen in Hounslow before being reported as missing by his brother David in the July of 2002. It’s unclear what had brought him to this part of Surrey.
A police spokesman said at the time:
Had the motorists that saw a car swerve off the road and plough into the undergrowth actually seen some kind of spectral re-enactment of the original accident? We might never find out.
(*This is a story that I read when very young and it’s stayed with me ever since and will hopefully feature in the Hallowe'en Frightday.)
Fancy more creepy reads?
Frightday 1: The Cooper Falling Body Photograph
Frightday 2: What’s your Ghost Name?
Frightday 3: The Mystery of the Chase Coffins
Frightday 4: Robert the Haunted Doll
Frightday 5: The SS Watertown’s Floating Faces
Frightday 6: The Gruesome Mystery of Elisa Lam
Sources
http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/a3-ghost-crash-remembered-10-4807754
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/153084/Man-lies-dead-five-months.html?print=yes
[urlhttp://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/surrey/hauntings/a3-burpham-ghost-crash-2002.html[/url]
http://ghosthits.com/index.php/ghost-crash-burpham-surrey-a3-2002
http://hauntedspotslibrary.wordpres...ar-accident-leads-to-real-body-surrey-england
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/153084/Man-lies-dead-five-months.html?print=yes
[urlhttp://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/surrey/hauntings/a3-burpham-ghost-crash-2002.html[/url]
http://ghosthits.com/index.php/ghost-crash-burpham-surrey-a3-2002
http://hauntedspotslibrary.wordpres...ar-accident-leads-to-real-body-surrey-england
If you like to read about this kind of stuff then I have more on my blog. Sadly, I can’t link to it as it has a few adverts for my books so send me a message via trust and I’ll point you in the right direction (- that's allowed, right?).
(yes that's where I live too 
)
