OPINION – RICHARD MADELEY: I am at a loss for a proof to this spooky story.
Richard Madeley, left, in intrigued by ghost tales (Picture: Getty)
This can be a ghost story. Essentially the most confounding ‘true’ ghost tales have a tendency to return from non-believers; those that’ve all the time dismissed the very concept of visitations from past the grave as tips of the thoughts, wishful considering, or downright innovations. Satisfied cynics like me. Outright deniers of the supernatural. Till… except… one thing unusual – one thing genuinely unusual – appears to be occurring. Then we wobble. We doubt our conviction.
We hesitate. In my very own case, that’s the underside line with the so-called ‘Ruskington Horror’; a road-ghost apparition testified to by dozens of trustworthy, straight-talking Lincolnshire people for a few years now, and the topic of a soon-to-be-published e book Actual Ghost Encounters by Rob Gandy PhD, Retired Visiting Professor, Liverpool John Moores College.
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Really, it was me who first dubbed this intriguing phenomenon ‘The Ruskington Horror’, after a dwell phone-in on my outdated present, This Morning, a very good quarter of a century in the past. Viewers had been calling in with tales of ghostly encounters. It was all fairly predictable stuff and, frankly, slightly boring.
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Till a caller from Ruskington in Lincolnshire got here on the road. Haltingly, he described a terrifying expertise just a few weeks earlier; driving late at evening on a lonely stretch of the A15 previous the turnoff for the tiny village of Ruskington, he all of a sudden noticed a face staring by the windscreen at him; a person, with greenish-grey pores and skin, and lengthy, matted hair.
The determine gave the impression to be holding one hand up, both in reproach or in warning. Our caller genuinely thought he’d hit somebody, and screeched to a halt. However there was no signal of anybody.
After casting round and inspecting the entrance of his automobile for impression harm – none – he drove on dwelling, very slowly, and really frightened. He advised a particularly convincing story.
However right here’s the factor. Inside minutes, our switchboard was jammed with calls from astonished motorists who’d had an equivalent expertise on that very spot. All the time the identical. Late at evening (small hours, normally); a determine with lengthy, tangled hair, disagreeable, decaying complexion, and one hand raised in supplication or risk. The identical story. Over and time and again.
So, I dubbed it ‘The Ruskington Horror’, and we dispatched a movie crew to the scene. Our reporter found sightings went again a long time. And the main points had been unvarying. Male. Pitted, greenish pores and skin. Darkish, greasy hair.
And the dreadful certainty in drivers that they’d hit somebody, solely to cease and uncover the highway was empty. Rob Gandy advised me this week that there have been a string of contemporary sightings within the 25 years since that phone-in.
So what’s occurring? Mass hysteria? Or mass remark? Do share your theories with me.
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