HALLOWEEN TRIPLE WHAMMY # 3 - MY OWN ENCOUNTER WITH A GHOST.

What better night than Halloween for a spooky story ? So here's one of my own... 

It's something that happened many years ago back in the early 1990's but the ghost in question can still be found easily enough today (if you know where to look).

I'm not going to pretend that this encounter changed my life or made me look at the world differently or anything like that (I've always been a believer). But it was interesting (and creepy) nonetheless.

The year was 1993 and I was nineteen years old. At that time I was still living with my parents in the small mining town of Sutton-in-Ashfield in Nottinghamshire. I was a student at my local college of further education located in the neighbouring town of Mansfield. 

My friend Andy was also a student, however whereas I was doing my A levels, he had started a graphic design degree at a college in Sheffield (a city located in South Yorkshire known mainly for its steel production industry). Andy was still living with his Mum and Dad in Sutton as well, he was lucky enough to own a car and so drove all the way to uni every day. It's a 25 mile trek each way, so Andy was driving 50 miles a day there and back but the inconvenience was outweighed by the money he saved by living at home with his parents.

One night I was round at Andy's house and we where sat upstairs in his room talking about general stuff when he mentioned that a lot of the students on his uni campus had been talking about a ghost they had seen. I was immediately intrigued by this, so asked him to continue.

Andy told me that near to his campus in the small town of Kiveton was a country lane which was apparently haunted by the ghost of a small child which had been killed after being hit by a car. Apparently, if you drove down the road you could see the child run out in front of your car only to then disappear when it reached the opposite side of the road.

It had become something of a trend at the campus for car loads of students to head up to the lane and drive around until they'd seen the ghost. "Andy" I said "We've gotta go and see this". Andy just smiled a knowing smile and agreed with me. He said that was the reason he told me about it. He knew I was into all this weird stuff and wanted someone to go with him as he was desperate to see it but didn't have the guts to go there alone.

The name of the lane gave me a bit of a pause for thought - Packman Lane. "Serously ?" I said "Packman? Is this a wind up ?" (It's pronounced just the same as the ghost gobbling 80's arcade game, but spelt differently). Andy agreed that the name sounded dodgy but it was just a weird coincidence and several people that he knew had gone to the lane and EVERY ONE OF THEM had all said they'd witnessed something. That doubt being removed, plans where made to do it the following week and I went home that night with my head full of ghosts and excitement.

The following week of college went by tediously slowly, I couldn't wait to get out there and see my first honest to God ghost. Eventually, Monday morning came and I went to college in Mansfield. Only instead of going to my class I went to Mansfield bus station, hopped on a bus and two hours later was in Sheffield. It was a cold January day and there where ominous looking dark grey clouds hovering in the sky. It looked like snow was on the way...

I arrived at the campus and met Andy when he was on a break. He said that snow had been forecasted but it wasn't going to be heavy so we should still be good to go. He finished for the day at about 4pm and so for the next few hours I hung around the college library and common room waiting for Andy.

Four o clock came and Andy had with him another student - a guy that I seem to remember was called Mike. This was in the days before Sat-Nav so we needed a guide to show us the way, someone who had been there before so we didn't get lost. Mike was to be our guide.

As we left the campus, night had fallen and the first few flakes of snow where starting to fall. It was a crisp, cold winter night - perfect ghost hunting conditions.

Kiveton was located about 11 miles away from the campus and as we made our way there the snowfall got a little heavier. In retrospect driving to a deserted country lane in a snowstorm probably wasn't the smartest thing to be doing, but we where young, fearless and dumb back then, besides I'd waited all week and bunked off college especially to do this. No way where we turning back now.

After about a half hour we arrived at Packman Lane. The first thing that greeted us was a gnarled looking old tree (pictured below)...

Just imagine seeing THAT tree, whilst being hyped up to see a ghost no less, with the moon illuminating it in an eerie way and you can get some sense of the weird atmosphere that fell upon us. It was like something from a horror movie. At least the snow had stopped falling so that was something.

Andy drove his little Ford Fiesta down the dark narrow lane, the overgrown hedges rising up around us, thier branches reaching out to gently scrape the side of the car like dead men's fingers. "It's just up here" said Mike "where the road dips. That's where it always appears. Make sure you've got your headlights on full beam and be sure to be doing about 25 miles per hour." "Why 25 miles per hour ?" Asks Andy. "Because that's the speed the car that hit the kid was travelling at" replies Mike as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.

So we drove towards the dip...

"THERE IT IS !" shouts Mike. "JESUS !" shouts Andy, he momentarily loses control of the car, so startled he was, and slams on his brakes. The car skidded to a halt !

Sure enough there it was.

I can distinctly remember seeing a pair of legs running across the road. The top half was a blurred white light with no discernable shape or form, but there where DEFINITELY legs. What's more - these legs where running in that scampering, slightly stumbling manner that little kids tend to run in. They where pale white and semi- transparent in the same way that ghosts always look like in the movies.  But they where real and I had seen them. We all had...

Andy turned round to look at us both with a slightly crazed look on his face - "Is everyone OK?" he asked. "Yeah" I replied "Your driving shit me up more than the ghost". Andy apologised and then said "Lets turn round and do it again".

So we did. About two or three more times. 

The second time I saw the top half of the figure. This time the legs where blurry but the top half was more defined. I couldn't make out any facial features but there was a definite sense of a head and shoulders being there this time. 

Each time we went past, seeing the ghost became more thrilling and yet more familiar. By the third or fourth time that ghost was starting to feel more like an old friend than anything else. That's the main thing that I can remember about the experience. It was certainly creepy but it wasn't scary. It felt more like being on a roller coaster. It was exhilarating, even life affirming in its way.

After that, we dropped Mike off back at the halls of residence and made our way back to Sutton. We spent most of the drive back alternating between excited jabbering conversation about what we'd just seen and a kind of shell shocked awe struck silence. We said we'd go back and do it again in a few weeks, maybe take a few more of our friends with us, but we never did. We got caught up again with our studies and part time jobs and social lives and it was just one of those things that passed us by in our mad scramble to get older and see and do as many other things as possible. Such is life...

If you look online there are other accounts of the Packman Lane haunting.  Some people still say it's a child, others that it's the ghost of a highwayman. As is usually the case nobody seems to know for sure and probably never will.

There have even been a few quasi "rational" explanations bandied about. Some people claim that the dip in the road causes car headlights to be rebounded back at the driver, temporarily dazzling them and creating an optical illusion. The thing is though -ALL THREE OF US SAW THE SAME THING - Surely if it was a hallucination at least one of us would have seen something different or even nothing at all. Besides, there where those legs...they where DEFINITELY legs. I know what I saw...