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:: The Ghost of Bluebell Hill :: |
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HK Ref: |
X0003A |
Location: |
Bluebell Hill, Kent.
(A229) Bridge Across Old Chatham Road & Robin Hood Lane Junction. |
Interest: |
Accidents, Hit and Run, Haunting of Young Woman. |
Last updated: 20th November 2005 |
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:: Introduction
The road ghosts of Bluebell Hill must be one of the most notorious stories in Kent and the most dangerous.
When they least expect it, innocent motorists are suddenly confronted by a young woman's figure, which runs out in front of the vehicles at night. In three separate incidents, actual collisions were reported by motorists in 1992 and each driver had said the young woman had stared hard at them as they hit her. In every case full investigations were subsequently carried out by the police, but at no time was any evidence of victim or crash found to back up the accounts.
It was autumn of 1992 when three separate motorists reported knocking down a figure that ran into the path of their vehicle late at night on Bluebell Hill, Kent. In the two most dramatic encounters, the figure of a young woman had stared hard into the eyes of the driver as his vehicle struck her.
Subsequent police investigations not only failed to find a victim, but no evidence that an accident had occurred, prompting their conclusion that these motorists had probably encountered the famed Ghost of Bluebell Hill.
It is a matter of record that late in the evening of Friday 19 November 1965 two cars were in collision on Bluebell Hill (A229). Three of the four young women in one of the vehicles, a Mark 1 Ford Cortina, died as a result of their injuries, one instantly. The fourth was seriously injured. The driver of the other vehicle, a Jaguar, was uninjured, and his companion, though badly hurt, was discharged from hospital a few days later. |
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Their car had hit the jaguar after skidding on a dangerous bend near the bridge over the Old Chatham Road.
One of the fatally injured women was a bride-to-be. Her wedding, scheduled for the following day, was never to take place. It had been too late to inform a number of the wedding guests, who dutifully gathered at the church in Gillingham the next day, only to be turned away.
In the early part of that Saturday, surgeons were involved in a desperate struggle to save her life. But to no avail. Her injuries had been too severe, and she died five days later in the West Kent Hospital, Maidstone, without regaining consciousness. She was unaware of the vigil that her fiancé, had kept by her bedside throughout.
Was this tragedy the cause of the hauntings..?
There are also four reported sightings of a phantom hitch-hiker on Bluebell Hill. In most cases, a driver picks up a female passenger who then disappears from the back seat, leaving no trace of her presence.
There have been several other accounts of figures simply walking head-on into cars and disappearing into the bonnet or under the wheels, but on inspection, nothing has been found. |
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:: Rochester Man - 1969
In 1969, a man from Rochester reported seeing two pedestrians approaching, then suddenly disappearing. Once, while he was driving along Bluebell Hill, the phantom pedestrians walked across the road and a car drove right through them. |
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:: The Goodenough Incident - 1974
In the early hours of 13 July 1974, Maurice Goodenough, a 35-year-old bricklayer from Rochester rushed into Rochester Police Station claiming he had knocked down a young girl on Bluebell Hill. Police hastened with him back to the scene only to find the discarded car blanket (or tartan car rug) with which Mr Goodenough had covered (or wrapped) the injured girl, whom he had carried to the roadside following the accident, which had occurred around midnight.
Goodenough told police that the girl had appeared suddenly in his car's headlights, forcing him to brake hard. But it had been too late to avoid running into her.
"The girl just walked out in front of me from the edge of the road," he said. "My car hit her with a hell of a bang."
Jumping out of his car, he found the girl lying in the road. She had a cut on her forehead and cut or 'skinned' knees. One source included a feature that appeared in no other version of the incident: the girl was moving her head and had muttered 'Mummy' two or three times.
Goodenough estimated the girl to have been about ten years old. She had shoulder-length brown hair, and was dressed in a lacy white blouse, white ankle socks and a skirt.
He tried to wave down 'about four cars' but none stopped. So, unable to see a telephone box, and of the opinion that it would be unwise to try to put the girl in his car, he left her by the roadside while he sped off to Rochester Police Station.
Thirty minutes later (According to these papers - Chatham Standard ; Chatham News), Goodenough returned to the spot with police officers, who immediately instigated a search for the girl on both sides of the steeply wooded Hill, but without success. The search resumed at dawn with the aid of a tracker dog, but no scent trace, tracks or bloodstains were found, the effort by then hampered by heavy rain. Extensive enquiries, including a check on hospital admissions, failed to locate anyone answering the girl's description.
Aside from the obvious and natural concern for the girl's well-being, the Chatham Standard and the Chatham News aired police fears that she may have been abducted. "We would appeal for any parent whose child has some unexplained injuries like a bump on the head to contact us. We would also like to hear from anyone whose child is missing," said a spokesman.
From his home in Rochester on the Saturday night, Mr Goodenough was evidently confounded. He told The News of the World that he had definitely hit a girl and carried her to the side of the road. "I'm not going mad," he said. "But where did she vanish? I'm still shaking from the experience."
If Maurice Goodenough was unsure exactly what to make of his experience, the Press evidently were not. From the start, the location of the incident and consequent failure to find the girl meant only one thing: the girl had to be a ghost. Apparent support for this contention lay with the inability (as would be the case in the incidents of 1992) to find any sign of damage to Goodenough's car.
As it turned out, the gamble of the general Press paid off. No child was forthcoming to invalidate their favoured interpretation. In the subsequent weeks local newspapers firmly linked Maurice Goodenough's experience to Bluebell Hill's existing legend of a hitch-hiking ghost, and to its supposed 'cause' - a tragic event that had previously been alluded to, but never openly identified. |
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:: Ghost Girl Seen Again - 1992
| So ran the front page headline of the Kent Today of Tuesday 10 November 1992.
The article, by Emma Cooper, described the 'chilling new turn' in the saga of Kent's most famous phantom. The incident, it was reported, had taken place 'around midnight' the previous Sunday night (8 November) near the Aylesford turn-off of the southbound carriageway of the A229 at Bluebell Hill, some four miles to the north of Maidstone.
Ian Sharpe, a 54-year-old coach driver, was on the last leg of his journey home to Maidstone when a young woman had appeared in the path of his vehicle, ran towards him and, with her eyes locked on his, fallen beneath the bonnet. Horrified, Ian skidded the car to a halt, and shakily got out to take account of the accident.
"I honestly thought I had killed her," he said. "You can't imagine how it felt. I was so scared to look underneath, but I knelt down and looked straight through - there was nothing there." 1
Ian searched around about the car, and in the bushes of the wide verge, but found nothing. Attempts to flag down two cars for assistance failed, so he continued on into Maidstone, making straight for the police station to report the incident. |
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White-faced and 'shaking like a leaf', he told police that he had run over a woman but could not find the body. After listening to Ian's account, in course noting the particular spot on Bluebell Hill where the incident had occurred, the police seemingly came to an immediate if presumptuous judgement by recounting to him the 'spooky legend' of the ghost said to haunt that stretch of road.
Nevertheless, officers accompanied him back to the scene, and a search of the area ensued, which proved fruitless. No sign of damage was found on his car, reinforcing opinion that he could not have encountered a real person. But Ian maintained, he had not been 'seeing things'. The girl had seemed perfectly real, not as he imagined a ghost would be.
The following day, Ian Sharpe was said to still be expecting the police to knock at his door to report the finding of the girl's body. It had been, he said, the 'most scary' experience of his life.
Later that same month and year, a woman with a red scarf ran in front of a car near the Robin Hood Lane junction, falling underneath it. The driver stopped and went back, but there was no sign of a victim. The police were called and thoroughly combed the area, but found nothing. |
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:: Old Woman - 1993
In January 1993 an old woman in baggy clothes ambled into the road and then stopped in the middle, defiantly facing away from the traffic. As the driver and his passenger approached, she turned deliberately and leered at them. Her face was terrifying, wizened like a witch's, with a black hole of a mouth. The apparition waved its arms around as if cursing the couple and they were badly shaken by the experience. |
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:: References & Research :: |
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:: Source Information
Thank you to the following sources for supplying Haunted Kent with information regarding the Bluebell Hill incidents.
http://www.roadghosts.com
:: Reference Books
Haunted Kent; Janet Cameron (pub. 2005); Tempus Publishing Ltd. |
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(Famous Bluebell Hill Sightings)
(Facing up Bluebell Hill)
(More road shots at the famous Bluebell Hill)
(Very strange photo indeed!)
(Strange orbs following us)
(Large orb in this photo ..)
(View from Kits Coty House)
(Kits Coty House surrounded by a strange mist)
(Carvings on the back)
(History of Kits Coty House)
(Team member takes a photo of an orb, he is looking at it!)
(Little Kits Coty ruins ..)
(Clearing at foot of Bluebell Hill along the Pilgrims way)
(Team member is convinced we are being followed)
(Image taken directly after, there is something strange in the distance ..) |
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