The Long Straight A ghost story based on truth by Charles Roberts

Mark loved this stretch of road, the fast curves and long straight section, then more fast curves up to the roundabout.  He got up early just to drive this way.  He’d usually take the motorway which cut about half an hour off his journey, but he tried to drive this road at least once a month.  He turned off the main road and took the left hand bend which began the series of fast curves, the only thing he had to beware of was the possibility of a police speed trap.  They usually parked up just after the old airfield on an old road into the woods.  He also had to be careful in the autumn because of the wet leaves on the road.  He was surprised that there hadn’t been more accidents on that road because no one stuck to the speed limit.

He put his left hand on his seat belt and pulled it tighter as he put his foot down and saw the speedometer needle moving round from forty to fifty, sixty, seventy.  He took the first of the right handers at sixty, accelerated out of it, up to seventy, then a left hander, holding her at seventy for the next right hander, the trees flashing past on both sides of the road.  He reached eighty as he went by the abandoned farmhouse on his left and into the next left hander and onto the straight, this was two and a half miles long, there was a very slight right curve just after the airfield, which was about halfway down, it was here the police liked to put their speed trap.

He’d once reached a hundred and forty down here but he’d frightened himself a little so he kept it down to about a hundred to a hundred and ten.  On the left the trees stopped and the rusty old fence started, that denoted the start of the old airfield.  It was now when Mark saw him, standing at the side of the road, he was holding something which was slung over his right shoulder, Mark just make out the lump on the man’s back.  “Stay where you are,” Mark said. “Please don’t move!  Stay where you are.”  There was nothing coming in the opposite direction so he moved over onto the wrong side of the road, just in case the man stepped out, and lifted his foot off the accelerator pedal.

Mark had his eyes glued to the man, he’d been coming down this road at least once a month for about nine years and this was the first time he had seen anyone, except the police, that is.  He glanced down at his speedometer, fifty five, he was fast approaching the man four hundred yards, three hundred yards, “Stay where you are,” two hundred yards, “don’t move!” one hundred yards. Mark felt the bump as the car hit something and felt it veer slightly to the right, the man had come from standing at the side of the road to the opposite side so quickly Mark didn’t have a chance.

He hit him!  He hit the man with the right front corner of the car, smoke billowed from the tyres, as Mark was almost standing on the pedal trying to stop the car.  It snaked from side to side as Mark fought to bring it to a halt.  When he had stopped Mark threw off the seat belt and jumped out to race back down the road.  He reached the rear of the car but the road was clear.  “My god!  I must have hit him with such force that he’s been thrown into the woods.  He ran back up the road to where he thought that he’d hit the man and looked on the grass verge and into the trees but there was no sign of anyone.

Mark then ran back to his car and looked at the front left corner where he’d seen the man hit, but there wasn’t any damage, the car was as clean as when he’d reversed out of the garage that morning.  As he was looking under the car, to make sure the man wasn’t there, he heard a car slowing down, he looked up to see a police car coming to a stop just behind him.  The policeman got out of his car and put his hat on as he approached Mark.

“Do you have a problem Sir?” he asked as Mark stood.

“I don’t know,” he started, “I was coming down here and saw a man stood at the side of the road, he didn’t look, he just stepped straight out in front of me.  I swerved but I couldn’t miss him, I hit him in fact but he’s disappeared.”

“People don’t just disappear Sir.”

“But there’s no damage to the car, I must have been doing forty or fifty when I hit him, but there’s not a mark on the car.”

“Where about was this man when he stepped out in front of you?  Can you show me the exact spot?”

“I’ll try,” he said felling a little faint with the shock.  Mark led the policeman to where he thought he’d hit the man and they looked on the verge and in the trees they couldn’t see anything.  No footprints in the verge, no body in the trees, no bag on the road or anywhere else for that matter, just the rubber marks on the road surface where Mark had hit the brakes and locked the wheels.

“Are you sure you saw this man Sir?”

“I’m beginning to have doubts now officer, but……  No!  I definitely saw him.  He was stood there looking across the road at the old airfield and then when I got within a hundred yards of him he stepped out in front of me.  I slammed the brakes on and swerved, but I hit him.  I heard and felt the thump as the car hit him.”

“Then where’s the body Sir?” the policeman asked.

“I wish I knew.”

“Are you all right?  You’ve gone as white as a sheet.”

“Shock I think.  I’ve never driven into anyone before.”

They heard the noise of an old Land Rover coming down the road, it pulled up behind Mark’s car with a squeal of brakes and an old man got out from behind the wheel.

“Need a hand?” he asked approaching. “Is he all right?” he said looking at Mark who was now leaning against his car.

“I’m fine!” he said a bit too sharply.

“I’m only asking young man,” he said a little put out.

“This gentleman was driving down the road here and says that he saw a man standing at the side of the road, then he stepped out in front of him.”

“That would be about a hundred yards up there,” the newcomer asked, “don’t worry yourself lad,” he said, “That’s Willy Chambers, he was a pilot here during the war.  One evening they were going out on a raid over Germany, he managed to get the old Manchester, (the fore-runner of the Lancaster), into the air but one of his two engines failed and she came down about three hundred yards in that direction,” he said pointing towards the woods, “They never recovered the bodies, just put a wooden cross at the side of the hole, said a few prayers and left.  He comes out of the woods occasionally to go back to his squadron dispersal hut.  You’re not the first to see him lad and you won’t be the last.”

“Can I ask who you are Sir?” the constable asked.

“I run the farm just back there,” he said as he walked back to his still running Land Rover and drove off.  Mark and the policeman watched as it drove down the road slowly disappearing.

Just a footnote to the story, 'The Long Straight.'

It is a story based on truth.  The 'ghost' I knew as Lindholm Willy and was seen a lot of times standing looking across the road at the airfield.

In the mid eighties they were harvesting peat at the east end of the airfield and came across human remains at an aircraft crash site.  They were carefully removed, and they were found to be of a Polish pilot whose aircraft had crashed on take-off.  He was given a full military funeral in the churchyard of Finningly, just down the road, and Lindholm Willy has not been seen since.