We know you’d say no one besides a few paranormal kooks still believe in ghosts. But two men apparently had a real-life encounter with one recently while driving along a deserted country road leading to Belmont from Blackburn in England. And despite being terrified the passenger had the presence of mind to capture on video evidence to silence doubting Thomases who say that “seeing is believing.”
The video, which has gone viral, with over five hundred thousand views since it was posted to YouTube Sunday, has no detailed description. But it shows two men traveling in the night in a car. They filmed a lone, creepy-looking figure draped in white, hobbling hunched along the road on a walking stick in the pitch-black night. The specter appears in the car’s headlight in the distance. It was walking in the same direction as the car, towards Belmont, but as the car approaches, it turns around.
The sight of a ghoulish creature, like a phantom apparition on a deserted rural road, completely unnerves the men. As the creature moves closer, apparently trying to reach the car, a terrified grown man can be heard screaming in a language The Daily Record tells us is Arabic, and translates , “Move the car backwards; Faster! Faster!”
The driver beats a panicky retreat. The creature moves to the other side of the road and disappears into the bush.
But many who have shared this petrifying footage say they do not believe that the hunched figure is a real ghost. The claimed they shared the footage only because they thought it was hilarious to watch terrified grown men being chased by a “ghost.”
Some argued that the video was a planned stunt to garner YouTube views. Others said the man in the car appeared genuinely scared and that the figure was likely a prankster pretending to be a ghost.
A viewer comments, “The video is clearly a stunt, and if anyone actually believes it they either need to stop thinking paranormal activity’s real or get their eyes tested.”
Another viewer writes: “Even though I don’t think that it’s real, it’s still creeped me out a little bit! I wouldn’t want to be followed by something looking like that whether it was real or not!”
A third viewer comments, “I think the video’s hilarious. What more do you want from a clip than a ‘ghost’ with a walking stick chasing a car? I don’t know what would be more scary, actually seeing a ghost or encountering a stranger wearing a bed sheet carrying a walking stick?”
Someone suggested that the driver should have plucked up the courage to drive through the ghost to test whether it was a prankster or a real ghost: “I’m not being funny, but if they thought it was a ghost then why didn’t they just drive right through it? That would also have solved the ‘hoax’ question once and for all!”
But according to the Lancashire Telegraph, a local historian and ghost hunter, Simon Entwistle, said he did not think the footage is a hoax:
“I’ve looked at the footage… I can always tell when someone’s pulling your leg, but from looking at that footage they were absolutely terrified, the person was genuinely scared. Would someone go out of their way to dress like that and actually scare someone? If so it could have caused a serious traffic accident, and they were endangering lives.”
Entwistle, author of “Ghostly Tales of the Unexpected,” said the footage was captured near Turton Tower. He said the ghost was probably that of a monk who was executed in the tower in 1643. The portion of the road between Egerton and Darwen is known to locals as “The Devil’s Highway,” because of its high accident rate, he explained.
Noting that the Lancashire area has a long history of ghost sightings, he concluded, “It’s the actual timing that I find quite unusual, this person was executed in early January 1643, and the ghost will only make an appearance in the early January period.”
