S02 Episode 5: Roads to Knowhere

the world. In a classic sense, the notion might bring to mind Washington Irving's headless horsemen from his gothic and satirical masterpiece The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and although not a ghost in the regular sense, you'd be hard pushed to find a more iconic incarnation of the mysterious roadside wanderer than the eponymous hitchhiker from HBO's Darkened Trashy anthology series.

The prevalence of such stories has been clearly aided by the growth of the automobile industry and the frequency with which people might, as a result, find themselves driving alone through eerie nights on deserted roads, miles from familiar surroundings, in other words, the perfect environment for a spectral encounter. And it is this the basic utility of the humble road, or any other thoroughfare for that matter, that for me makes it in many ways the most apt location for

a haunting. Not only is the path a metaphor with multiple applications, but also literally, it is the pathway's basic function to deliver you from one place to another, a journey that often involves traveling through the unfamiliar places rarely experienced only glimpsed in passing, and often at speed from

inside the relative comfort of a moving vehicle. On the fifteenth of May two thousand and nine, in London, work began on a major transport project to construct to high speed rail link traveling east and west through the heart of the city. In March two thirteen, construction workers tunneling deep below the ground found the remains of twenty five

skeletons in a small five meter wide shaft. The remains, found to be almost seven hundred years old, were later discovered to have been victims of the Black Death, a

plague that swept through Europe in the fourteenth century. The discovery is one of many extraordinary archeological finds uncovered by excavations for the New Line, including a number of similar burial sites with some dating as far back as seven thousand to BC, as well as the discovery of over ten thousand artifacts spanning across thirty different sites throughout the city. Not only does the revelation of the burial site bring to mind Nigel Neels wonderful Sci Fi Cereal, Quatermat and

the Pit. But it also serves as a gruesome reminder of those that have walked the paths before, and perhaps in some ways still do. It certainly begs the question that, even when traveling the most seemingly deserted of roads, are we ever truly alone? You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard McClean smith. The A six one six is a road that begins just to the north of the town of Newark on Trent in the county of Nottinghamshire in

the East Midlands. Tracing a path northwest through the country. The road bends round Sherwood Forest, crossing the border into Derbyshire at the town of Cresswell, before disappearing into the concrete vortex of the M one motorway, and then, as if by some mysterious process of refractive urban planning, it appears again some fifty miles further up, now in Yorkshire, sprouting westward from junction thirty five just above the city

of Sheffield. Prior to nineteen eighty eight, the road continued on through the town of Stocksbridge at the northern fringe of the Peak District, before eventually coming to an end at the city of Huddersfield. In nineteen eighty seven. However, building began on a small stretch of the road that would later become known as the Stocksbridge Bypass, a stretch of road now generally regarded as one of the most

haunted in the whole of the UK. The years since the construction of the bypass have seen a highly unusual amount of strange sightings and sounds that remained to this day unexplained. It began on a warm September evening in nineteen eighty seven when two security guards, Stephen Brooks and David Goldthorpe, were patrolling the building site of the unfinished bypass.

The men employed by the reputable ratherum based firm Constant Securities, were both well experienced and would often work the night shift together. Just to the south of the bypass lay the white, low rise hangars and dusty roads of the Stocksbridge Steelworks, and to the north, stretching for miles nothing but open fields and farm land. It is hard to resist the strange energy of such places. The concrete byway separate from the town but not fully removed, forming an

unnatural threshold between the urban and the pastoral. It is in such locations we often find those most peculiar of places, the siding, unfrequented, almost forbidden, pockets of land where wild flowers and grass compete with the cast off detritus of modern life. Running almost parallel to the road was the usual chain of electricity pylons, their spindly metal arms and drooping cables, just visible in the moonlight as they stretched

off towards the dark moors of the Peak District. Cruising round the site in their van, on the night of Tuesday eighth, Stephen and David were nearing the newly constructed p Roid Bridge when they spotted something peculiar. It was Stephen who noticed it first, some sort of movement at the base of a pylon near to the approach road to the bridge. As they got closer, Stephen couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. The movement appeared to be a group of young children playing and dancing at the

base of the pylon. It was odd, to say the least. Not only had it gone past midnight, but there were no houses anywhere nearby. And then David noticed something strange about the children's clothes, how old fashioned they were, but before they could get a closer look, the children completely vanished. The two guards immediately pulled up and got out of

the van. More than a little unsettled, they made their way to where the children had been dancing only moments before, but found no footprints or any other sign that anyone had been there at all, and all around the air was still save for the quiet hum of the electricity pylon overhead. Confused, the men returned to the van and continued their patrol, but no sooner had they reached the bottom of the bridge, Stephen caught sight of something else peculiar.

Look there, he said, pointing to the top of the bridge. What on earth is that? David pulled up the van and looked out at the windscreen. It appeared to be the silhouette of a man wearing a hooded cloak. Together they called out to the man to leave the site, but the figure did not reply and remained frozen on the bridge. Assuming they were the victims of a practical joke, Stephen got out of the van, keeping an eye on the figure as David drove the van to the opposite

side of the bridge and switched the lights on. Too full beam Stephen watched in horror from the other side as the light shone straight through the body the figure. But what was more terrifying was that whatever it was appeared to be missing its head. Moments later, the figure disappeared. Constant security director Mike Lee had been sound asleep when he received a panicked call at four thirty am requesting

he head out immediately to the building site. When he arrived, he found both Stephen and David waiting for him in a state of abject fear. The guards proceeded to describe to Mike what they had seen that night, and from the tone of their voices, it was clear to Mike

that this was no joke. Mike knew the men as two down to earth, tough South Yorkshire lads, a rugby player and weightlifter, but now what he saw in front of him were two frightened boys shaking with shock, with Stephen even being reduced to tears as he recounted the knight's events. Are you always taking care of your family? Do you often take care of others and not yourself? Now it's time to take care of yourself, to make

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in to nearby Deep Car Police Station. Police Constable Dick Ellis answered the phone to find a trembling voice on the other end of the line. It was Stephen calling from home, desperate for any kind of help, but there was little that Pcllis could do other than to suggest that Stephen tried contacting his local church, and so it was with some surprise that the next day Dick received another phone call about the same matter, only this time

it was from a priest. He said that he was calling on behalf of two men security guards from the Stocksbridge Bypass construction site. He explained that they had come to see him in a state of deep distress. The men had requested an exorcism of the road, worried that perhaps a graveyard had been disturbed in the construction of it. So convinced of the men's stories, or at the very least convinced of their fear, the priest asked PC Ellis if he could investigate the site before he started making

any cause to the Vatican. The following day, on the evening of Friday, September the eleventh, PC Dick Ellis and Special Constable John beat got into their regulation Fiat Panda patrol car and made their way towards the construction site. Before long, they passed the quiet and deserted steelworks on the edge of town and pulled into the building site

just at the foot of Proid Bridge. A short time later, the men were sat with the engine and lights turned off, admiring the bright full moon hanging in the sky above them, while the radio crackled intermittently in the background. The men agreed to give it a few more minutes before calling it a night and heading back to the station. But then something caught the eye of pc Ellis. Turn off the radio, he said to John, what is that up

there on the bridge. John could see it too, some sort of shadow moving about in front of a set of large palletts. John tried flashing the car lights to get a better sense of it, but the angle wasn't quite right. Stay here, said Dick, as he got out of the car made his way over to the boxes to investigate. Despite all his experience and training, a peculiar feeling had begun to settle over PC Ellis, a feeling of dread that seemed to wrap itself around him, tightening

as he drew nearer to the pallets. And there it was again, the shadow, moving quickly in front of him. He called out, but there was no reply. Slowly he continued forward until finally he could see it clearly, just a loose sheet of polythene partially ripped from the pallet and flapping about in the wind. With some relief, Ellis returned to the vehicle and relayed the news to John. The two men couldn't help but laugh and decided to

call it a night. But something wasn't quite right. Despite uncovering the true cause of the mysterio his figure on the bridge, Ellis couldn't quite shake that lingering feeling of dread. Now back in the car, it seemed to be intensifying. It wasn't a fear as such, but more of a sudden sense of impending and inevitable doom. Ellis wound down the window to get a little air and looked out again across the deserted site, and then Ellis noticed something else.

Despite the warmth of the night, the temperature in the car had dropped dramatically, and now Ellis had the distinct, unmistakable feeling that he was being watched. But what was really terrifying was the dark shape that had just then appeared standing right outside his open window. Ellis froze and slowly turned his head head to face the figure, but when he looked out of the window, it had gone.

John screamed as there now standing on John's side of the car was the same shadowy figure, but this time John could see it clearly. At first he saw an old fashioned waistcoat and some sort of cravat, and then he lifted his eyes for a moment he caught a glimpse of a face, its blank eyes staring directly at him,

before it vanished again. The men leapt immediately from the vehicle, convinced someone was messing with them, But as they looked frantically around the car, there was little to be seen save for the soft yellow lights of nearby Stocksbridge and the bright full moon hanging high above them in the sky. After a quick search of the surrounding bankside, the pair, now deeply rattled, returned to the car to mount a

proper search of the area. Unable to find any one, they returned to the bottom of the bridge, pulled up the car and attempted to radio back to base, only the radio wouldn't turn on. Suddenly, two loud bangs rang out from the back of the car, as if something was pounding on the roof with all its might. John, now shaking, turned the ignition, but the engine refused to start. The thumps came again. John hurriedly tried the key once more,

and this time the engine sputtered into life. He shifted the car into gear, turned it around and sped off back to the safety of Stocksbridge. The following day, both men, despite the obvious potential for ridicule, reluctantly reported their accounts of the previous night, with Ellis putting the incident down to inexplicable phenomena. Unsurprisingly, the two officers were roundly mocked by many of their colleagues, and the story inevitably found

its way to the local paper, The Sheffield Evening Star. Incredibly, as writer Dave Clark noted having investigated the story years later, both the officers stuck rigidly to their story, with Ellis maintaining there was definitely something there, but I can't explain it. I might have dismissed it as my imagination, but my partner saw it and had the identical eerie feeling at the same time. It was definitely unnerving, and it wasn't

a publicity stunt, as was claimed at the time. We don't do that sort of thing in the police force. As for the security guards, Stephen Brooks and David Goldthorpe, neither stepped foot on the site again, and one of the men is believed to have since moved to Canada partly due to the stress caused by the event, and it was only the beginning. Soon many more sightings and

strange occurrences would come to light. John Holmes, a lorry driver from Hillsborough, reported pulling into a depot close to the bypass late one evening when he became aware of childish voices. After a moment, he realized they were singing, but there was no sign of children anywhere. The voices seemed to be emanating from a nearby wood. Sometime later in the autumn of that year, Graham Brooke and his fourteen year old son Nigel were running close to the

bypass construction site when they too saw something strange. Graham, a seasoned runner training for the London Marathon, had a regular route running from his home in northwest of Sheffield up to the village of Wortley, located close to where the bypass would eventually be built. After roughly forty five minutes of running, with dusk quickly descending, Graham, who was a short distance ahead of his son, was approaching a lay by on his way into the village when he

caught sight of something unusual. It was the figure of a man who appeared to be walking with his back towards the oncoming traffic. When Nigel finally caught up with his dad, he too saw the reckless man wandering along the road. The figure, who was no more than fifty yards away, appeared to be dressed in some sort of cloak with a dark brown hood. They noticed too that it was dragging some kind of bag attached to a

chain along the ground. But what was most peculiar was that the legs of the figure looked as though there were sunk into the road. As they stared in disbelief, they moved along the road to get a look at the man's face. It seemed to be covered in soot, with two dark sockets where the eyes should be. The figure drew nearer and nearer until a huge lorry swept past, right into the path of the man. As the lorry

continued down the road, the figure had completely disappeared. The bypass would eventually be opened the following year, on Friday the thirteenth in May of nineteen eighty eight, and the sightings would keep coming. In July nineteen ninety, Judy Simpson and her husband David were driving close to the village of Wartley alongside the bypass when they both caught sight of someone jogging in the middle of the field to

the left of the road, but looking closer. Although the jogger had the shape of a David and Judy realized with amusement that the figure appeared to be more like an outline of a person. What's more, it was moving about three feet above the ground. Suddenly, the figure leapt from the field over an embankment up ahead and landed straight in the middle of the road. Judy and David both braced for an impact, but there was nothing. It was as if the figure had melted into the vehicle.

The car skidded to a halt, clambering out to search for whatever it was that they hit, there was nothing to be seen. Seven years later, on New Year's Eve, twenty eight year old Paul Ford and his wife Jane drove to Jane's sisters home in Stocksbridge to attend a party. They had just moved on to the bypass when Paul looked up to see a dark cloak clad figure standing

in the road right in front of him. He immediately swerved and slammed on the brakes, wrestling with the steering wheel as the car came to a judging halt by the side of the road, but again when they looked for the figure afterwards, it was nowhere to be seen.

Since such sightings have been recorded throughout the world, often with surprisingly similar details, there is the temptation to label such events as urban myths, and yet rarely does one particular location garner such a collection of similar sightings, and over time a number of suggestions have been put forward to explain the strange events. During the Industrial Revolution, the area surrounding the Stocksbridge Bypass and the A six one six road had flourished as a hub of the British

coal mining industry. Up until the mid nineteenth century. It was common for children as young as five years old to be sent down the coal pits to work. Jobs undertaken by children included pulling the loaded carts along the small tunnels of the mine, or if you were really lucky, you might get a job as a trapper, opening small doors along the tunnels to let the air in. Often trappers would work for up to eighteen hours at a time, sat alone in the dark, with only the flickering light

of a solitary candle for company. Naturally, accidents and deaths were a regular occurrence, perhaps, as some have suggested, one such fatal accident occurred in the Stocksbridge region, giving rise to the ghostly apparitions of the large and dancing children. Another local tale of law details the story of a monk who had rejected his monastery and as a result, after he passed away, had been buried in unconsecrated ground. Perhaps this was the very same ground that had been

so brutally disturbed by the construction of the bypass. However, despite the local fondness for such explanations, no substantial evidence has been found to corroborate either of these tantalizing stories, and it is merely a coincidence, no doubt that the number six one six is considered by many scholars to

be the original number of the beast. Whatever you believe, it is difficult not to at least think upon the possible traces and ghostly echoes that we traverse as we make our way from A to B to wonder whose pasts and whose buried secrets do we callously smother with our grit and tarmac. What ancient grounds, once considered consecrated, are now to be ripped apart by diggers and drills

loud enough to wake the dead. Many years from now, a new generation of Planners will come across the remnants of an archaic pathway buried deep below the Earth, with nothing to discern its purpose save for a rusted sign buried near by, bearing a strange, cryptic alphanumeric code that read simply A six one six. And what then if, in the words of the illustrious Douglas Adams, it is decided one day that the entire planet is to make

way for a hyper space bypass. Perhaps future intergalactic travelers will too feel that strange shiver as they make their way between Venus and Mars, turning to each other to say, I heard there were people here once, and sometimes you can almost feel them. This episode and episode five extra, due out in a couple of weeks, concludes season two of Unexplained. So I just wanted to take a moment to once again thank everyone for listening to the show

and for all your support. It's been incredible, And to everybody that has made a donation, I really can't thank you enough, and I look forward to putting your donations to good use on season three. For which I may have a few changes in store, and I hope you enjoy them. For anyone else who might like to do to the show, you can find the support page on

the website at Unexplained podcast dot com, forward slash Support. Finally, I'd also just like to thank listener Emma Bruce for bringing the story of the Stocksbridge Bypass to my attention. All elements of Unexplained are produced by me, Richard Acclaimed Smith. Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.

You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or on Twitter at Unexplained Pod. Now it's time to take care of yourself. To make time for you, teledoc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best. Speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video any time between seven am to nine pm local time, seven days a week. Teledoc Therapy is available through most insurance or employers. Download the

app or visit teledoc dot com. Forward slash Unexplained Podcast Today to get started. That's t E la d oc dot com Slash Unexplained Podcast