Detour #666: Britain's Most Haunted Road
The A616 Stocksbridge Bypass in south Yorkshire is widely believed to be the most haunted road in the UK. Locals claim a group of phantom children can be heard singing “ring a ring of roses” by some electricity pylons and there’s a floating monk and a leaping ghoul who has been known to hitch a ride with unsuspecting motorists.
Constructed in the 1980s, it’s a main route across the Pennines through towards Manchester. It’s heavily trafficked, heavily policed and, if you believe the stories, it’s heavily haunted.
Even before the bypass was built the area was believed to home to a number of ghosts, but the building of the bypass has seen a huge rise in the number of sightings. In 1987, as the road was nearing completion security staff reported strange goings on near the steelworks. Two security officers said they saw children dressed in old-fashioned clothes sitting up near one of the electricity pylons one evening in September of that year. As the men approached, the children vanished. The following evening the same security officers saw a monk perched upon the half-built bridge. They were sufficiently spooked to call not just the police but the local priest.
Later that month two police officers went to investigate the area. PC Dick Ellis and Special Constable John Beet drove up to the bridge in their Vauxhall Astra patrol car. As they waited in their car, the officers began to feel uneasy. They described the feeling of a sudden chill coming over them, “as if someone had walked over my grave” said PC Ellis. Ellis looked out of his window and saw a strange figure right next to the car. Beet then looked out of his side window and saw the same figure. The mysterious man appeared to be dressed in a monk’s habit. The officers looked at one another then stepped out of the car to confront the man. He was gone.
Centuries ago the area was home to monastery farms and there is a tale of one monk who left the church to work as a groundsman at the nearby Underbank Hall. When he died he was buried on unhallowed ground. Could this be the monk who haunts the bypass? The exploitation of children in the mines of Yorkshire was common practice barely over a century ago, could it be some of these children who sing their songs by the electricity pylons?
Phantom gypsy caravans and fairies have also been sighted on the road, and, if you visit the Silver Fox pub, which has a poltergeist of its own, the locals will happily share their spooky stories.
Being a main dual carriageway it’s not the most delightful drive, but if you’re brave enough to be on the bypass in the dead of night it could well be one of the most memorable you’ll ever experience.
Words Nik Berg Twitter | Instagram
Photography Eugene Triguba / Unsplash
Roadbook
Class: Haunted highway
Name: Stocksbridge Bypass, A616
Route: M1 to south muskham
Country: UK
Distance: 27 miles