Stocksbridge Bypass

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In 1988, a new section of road was carved through the hills of the Peat District in northern England.

Built to divert heavy traffic away from the small town of Stocksbridge, the bypass was meant to bring relief.

But almost from the start, strange reports began to surface from workers on the site: sightings of figures where no one should be, and unsettling incidents that defied explanation.

In the years that followed, this stretch of highway became known not just for its hauntings, but for the unusually high number of lives it would go on to claim.

It was the 17th of November 1991.

The sun had long since sunk beyond the horizon and the rolling hills of the Yorkshire countryside were bathed in a tepid darkness.

A glow appeared over the tree line, the distant headlights of a car cutting their way through the endless black.

It was driven by a young woman, travelling home home after a long shift at the hospital where she worked.

The clock on the car's dash read 2.51am.

The high beams danced over a road sign, revealing a combination of numbers and letters which read A616, Stocksbridge.

The young woman yawned and looked in her rearview mirror, immediately wondering why she had even bothered.

The road receding behind her was pitch black, a featureless void.

There was nothing to see.

Yet the emptiness itself unsettled her.

The darkness pressed close to the car and in that instant the air seemed to turn colder, as though the night itself had exhaled against the windows.

An unborn fear not yet realised stirred somewhere in the pit of her stomach, though she had no idea why.

She reached instinctively for the radio, hoping for a familiar voice or music to ease her nerves.

Instead, only static poured from the speakers.

The harsh, broken hiss filled the cabin like a presence of its own, making her skin prickle.

Suddenly she felt compelled to glance to her side.

The passenger seat was empty, but something in her mind insisted otherwise.

She flicked her eyes back to the mirror.

There was nothing.

Yet the weight of unseen company hung in the air.

When she looked back towards the road, she froze.

Her heart skipped a beat.

She slammed both feet on the brake pedal.

The tyres screamed, struggling for purchase on the icy tarmac, and the car slewed violently across the carriageway.

She was now travelling sideways.

The world tilted into chaos.

An almighty thump jolted through the vehicle as it tore free from the road and tumbled down an embankment.

Metal groaned, glass shattered, then came a brutal halt.

The final image to pass through her mind before everything turned black was the lone figure she had seen standing in the middle of the road seconds earlier.

A figure that now seemed to have melted away into the night, leaving no trace it had ever been there at all.

The headlights sputtered out, and with them, her vision faded, leaving only the bitter tang of burnt rubber and the silence of the hills.

It was not the first crash to have occurred on this road, and it would not be the last.

In April 2025, the Stocksbridge Bypass was once again brought to a standstill when police closed the road following a serious collision that left both carriageways blocked for several hours.

For local residents, this scene was all too too familiar.

Over the decades, the bypass had been plagued by accidents, some minor, others devastating, and each new closure only reinforces the road's reputation as one of Britain's most dangerous stretches of highway.

Since its completion in 1988, the road has seen hundreds of incidents and more than 35 fatalities.

On average, almost one life has been lost here every year, a a grim statistic that has become synonymous with its notoriety.

What makes the case of the Stocksbridge Bypass more chilling is that these tragedies do not occur in isolation.

They are layered upon a folklore that was already forming before the road even opened to the public.

For many in the surrounding communities of Sheffield and Stocksbridge, the bypass is more than just a part of the infrastructure.

It has become a symbol of bad luck, of lingering lingering unease, and of stories that continue to cast a shadow over its otherwise ordinary appearance.

Stretching only five miles in length, the bypass forms part of the wider 38-mile A616 linking the industrial hubs of Sheffield and Manchester.

It should have been celebrated as a feat of modern engineering, offering a faster and safer route for heavy goods traffic and commuters alike.

Yet from its earliest days, the road seemed to attract more than its fair share of tragedy.

Motorists spoke of eerie sensations, sudden chills and inexplicable figures on the roadside.

Details that when paired with the unnerving accident record earned the Stocksbridge Bypass an international reputation as one of the world's most haunted roads.

One evening in September of 1987, whilst the road was still under construction, two security guards named David Goldthorpe and Stephen Brook were out patrolling the worksite near Piroyd Bridge.

The men had already begun to experience the unnerving feeling that someone or something was out there in the darkness, watching them, when they suddenly heard the unmistakable sound of children singing a short way off in the distance.

They had earlier ensured that the building works had been locked down and secured for the evening and were a long way from the nearest town or habitation, and so the two guards set off to investigate.

After a short walk, they spotted a small group of youngsters about 100 meters away, playfully singing and dancing in a circle beneath an electricity pylon.

The image was so incongruous with its setting that it momentarily stopped them in their tracks.

The pylons were surrounded by half-finished groundworks and piles of rubble, the kind of place where no child should have been wandering, let alone, after dark.

The children themselves looked strangely out of place too, their clothing resembling something more medieval than modern, simple dresses, breeches, and cloaks that made no sense on a chilly night in late 20th century Yorkshire.

The sight was so surreal that the guards half expected a film crew to appear from the shadows.

Assuming it must have been some sort of reenactment or prank and concerned that there were no adults around, the guards walked closer to see what was going on.

But when they were only a few meters away, the singing and dancing abruptly ceased.

The children froze for the briefest instant before simply vanishing.

No running away, no fading into the dark, they were simply there one moment, then gone the next.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

For a few seconds, the only sounds were the whistle of the wind across the open site, the steady hum of the pylons and the pounding of their own hearts.

Then, Brooke caught sight of further movement, this time over by the half-built roadbridge.

Against his better judgment, he urged Goldthorpe back into their Land Rover and the two of them set off towards the structure to investigate.

As the vehicle crept up the embankment, the headlights swept across the concrete and illuminated a solitary figure.

It was tall, cloaked and utterly motionless, standing at the very edge of the unfinished bridge.

What struck the men most was its solidity and yet its transparency.

The headlight seemed to shine directly through the body, lighting up the raw concrete behind, and yet the figure remained perfectly outlined.

Goldthorpe slowed the vehicle and Brooke reached for the passenger door handle intent on confronting the stranger.

But before he could set foot on the ground the figure simply vanished, dissolving into the night air without movement or sound, leaving the bare concrete bridge behind it.

Their nerve broken, the guards turned the Land Rover around and tore away from the sight, heading straight for the safety of Stocksbridge.

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The following morning, Constable Dick Ellis arrived at work to find the two ashen-faced security guards sat quietly waiting in the front office of the police station.

They looked exhausted, with dark circles beneath their eyes, and they spoke only when prompted.

He listened impassively as they described their encounters with the phantom children and the sinister hooded apparition, their words tumbling in nervous tones.

Ellis noted the tremor in their voices and the sincerity of their fear, though he said little in reply.

After he had sent them on their way, he shared the story with colleague PC John Beat, who laughed it off and jokingly suggested they should have instead consulted the parish priest.

As it turned out, they already had.

A short time later, the station phone rang and Ellis found himself speaking to the rector of Stocksbridge Church.

Calm but insistent, the cleric explained that the two security guards had come directly to him after leaving the police station.

They had remained in his company for some time, too terrified to return home and had begged him to bless the site.

Though he avoided sensational language, the rector made his point clear.

These were working men, not prone to flights of fancy, and the police should at least investigate for the sake of the community.

Somewhat reluctantly, the two constables agreed.

On Friday the 11th of September, three nights after the security guard sightings, PC's Beat and Ellis drove out to Piroyd Bridge to follow up on the suspicious activity.

It was midnight, the roadworks lying silent under a chill breeze when they parked up on the embankment.

Both men carried with them a certain cynicism, more amused than alarmed by their assignment.

They spoke in low tones, joking that the most frightening thing they were likely to encounter was a trespassing teenager or a stray fox.

Neither man expected to see anything unusual.

But within 10 minutes, Ellis suddenly tensed.

Out of the corner of his eye, he was certain he could see shadows moving across the overpass above them.

Suspecting intruders, he left the car and began to climb the fixed metal ladder up to the bridge.

As he reached the top, the dark expanse of the half-finished road stretched out before him.

A flapping sound met his ears, sharp and rhythmic, like wings beating in the darkness.

With the beam of his torch, he quickly discovered the culprit, a sheet of polythene caught against the railings and thrashing in the wind.

He weighed it down with a brick and returned to the patrol car, where he and Bet chuckled at the thought of the two guards being so spooked by nothing more than a loose sheet of plastic.

Unfortunately for them, their amusement did not last long.

Ellis had been staring out of the driver's side window at nothing in particular when he turned back back to look across at his partner and suddenly cried out in alarm.

Directly behind where the unsuspecting Beat was seated, the unmistakable outline of a man's upper torso was now pressed up against the glass of the passenger side window.

Beat instinctively spun round, but there was nothing to see.

The apparition had vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

Before either man could speak, the figure reappeared, this time on the opposite side of the car, now pressing against Ellis's window, as though peering inside.

Both constables froze in horror, realising that the intruder was missing its head entirely.

The form ended abruptly at the shoulders, its torso clad in what looked like a dark robe, cinched crudely at the waist with a length of rope.

The two men later recalled the intense dread that accompanied its presence, not just surprise at the sight, but a suffocating, heavy sensation that left them unable to move or call out.

After only a few seconds the figure was gone again.

Mustering their courage, Beat stepped out of the vehicle first, followed by Ellis, both sweeping their torches across the immediate area.

The ground was soft from recent rain.

but there were no footprints, no sound of anyone running away, and no evidence that another person had been near their patrol car.

They climbed back into their vehicle, keen to be away from the bridge, but when Ellis turned the key in the ignition, the engine refused to turn over.

Both men sat in silence, the weight of the incident hanging over them as the vehicle stubbornly failed to start.

After several attempts, the engine suddenly coughed into life.

and Ellis accelerated hard down the track.

They had barely gone a a few yards when the car was struck by a series of heavy blows, loud enough to echo through the bodywork of the vehicle.

It felt, Ellis later said, as though someone was hammering on the boot with their fists.

No one was visible in the rearview mirrors, yet the pounding continued until the car picked up speed and they left the site behind.

Shaken and pale, Both officers were left in little doubt.

They had just witnessed something they they could not explain, and they were convinced they had come face to face with a ghost.

Reports of ghostly sightings and encounters only increased in frequency after the bypass was eventually opened to the general public.

Commuters travelling along the road have reported all sorts of strange phenomena.

from thumping sounds to apparitions which appear either in or beside the road and in some cases even in the passenger seats of their cars.

One such account came from a local man returning home from a late shift in the early hours of the morning.

He had been driving alone along the bypass when, glancing up in his rearview mirror, he was horrified to see the reflection of a dark figure seated silently in the back seat of his car.

Heart racing, he spun his head round.

only to find the space empty.

Thinking he had imagined it, he turned back towards the road only for his headlights to pick out the same shadowy form now standing directly in his lane.

He swerved violently, narrowly avoiding a crash before pulling over in shock.

When he looked back, the road was deserted.

One morning in July 1990, David and Judy Simpson were driving to work along one of the thoroughfare's minor tributaries, the B6088.

They were passing the village of Wortley when David caught sight of what he thought was a jogger up ahead.

As their car closed in on the moving figure, both occupants gasped.

The individual's outline was ill-defined and dark in appearance, making it impossible to tell who or what it was.

Even more disturbing was that it appeared to be running in mid-air, with a full three-foot clearance between it and the ground beneath.

At the last second, the apparition suddenly hurled itself into the road directly in front of the oncoming car, before disappearing completely.

This incident is eerily similar to one which was experienced by Graham Brooke and his son Nigel, who were out one evening running in the fields not far from Wortley.

The two men were training for a marathon and had been jogging for about an hour when they were stopped in their tracks by a truly bizarre encounter.

As they had gone to cross a field, they had suddenly come face to face with a strange individual moving towards them from the other direction.

The newcomer was human in appearance but seemed to be walking with his lower half completely submerged below the surface of the field.

Its face was concealed by a dark coloured hood of some kind, and as it had passed the father and son, Both had been overwhelmed by a musty and unpleasant odour.

The figure disappeared when it reached the entrance to the field, leaving no physical trace behind it.

Far more concerning was a report made to the police by a young couple on New Year's Eve in 1997, in which they described nearly crashing due to the actions of a ghostly spectre.

The male party stated that he and his partner had been travelling along the bypass when a cloaked figure had come looming out of the darkness directly in front of them.

It seemed to have been hovering above the road's surface.

Had there been any other traffic on the road at the time, the driver was certain he would not have been able to swerve around the figure without colliding with another vehicle.

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As these examples demonstrate, most witness testimonies connected with the Stocksbridge Bypass and its surrounding countryside involve encounters with phantom children and robed monk-like figures.

But what exactly lies behind these unsettling manifestations?

Are they echoes of long-forgotten tragedies or something stranger still?

The earliest efforts to open a thoroughfare across this part of Yorkshire date back to the early 18th century.

A local entrepreneur named John Stocks financed the construction of a wooden bridge over the River Little Don, which offered an easier crossing for the growing traffic moving through the area.

In time, more and more travellers were drawn to this new crossing, which soon earned the name Stocks Bridge.

Yet almost from the beginning it was associated with misfortune.

Just a few years after it was completed, a stagecoach lost control on the approach road and careered into the river.

Several passengers were killed in what became one of the most notorious accidents of its day.

For decades afterwards, local people swore they could hear the sound of phantom horses' hooves clattering along the approach road, even on moonless nights when no coach was due.

Others spoke of seeing a driverless black carriage racing towards the bridge before vanishing into the mist.

It was, in many respects, the first ghost story of the district, and it firmly planted the idea that the crossing itself was cursed ground.

The hooded figure now said to stalk the bypass is commonly linked to a novice monk from Hunshalf Priory.

According to local tradition, The young man abandoned his vows and left the order to work at nearby Underbank Hall.

There are conflicting accounts of what befell him afterwards.

Some say he was buried in unconsecrated ground after renouncing his faith, his spirit forever restless.

Others believe his remains were disturbed centuries later during the earth-moving works that carved the bypass out of the hillside.

In either case, the image that remains in popular imagination is that of a robed figure with no face, silently observing passing motorists.

As for the ghostly children, their origin is harder to explain.

Some folklorists have suggested they may be connected to ancient sacrificial practices, stretching back to the Bronze Age.

Others argue they are the lost spirits of children who perished in the mines, mills and factories that once dotted the surrounding valleys.

The sight of young figures dancing in circles or running across fields has long been a recurring theme in British ghost lore, and Stocksbridge appears to carry on this tradition.

The bypass's reputation places it alongside other allegedly haunted roads both in Britain and overseas.

The A75 Kinmont Strait has earned the nickname the Most Haunted Road in Scotland, thanks to repeated reports of phantom figures, spectral animals and sudden apparitions that cause drivers to swerve violently.

In Kent, Bluebell Hill has become infamous for sightings of a phantom hitchhiker said to be the ghost of a bride killed in a car crash during the 1960s.

On Dartmoor, the B3212 is associated with a legend of the Hairy Hands, invisible forces said to grab the driver's wheel and drag their vehicle off the road.

These examples show that Stocksbridge is not unique.

Rather, it belongs to a long tradition of roads acquiring reputations as liminal spaces, thresholds between the ordinary and the uncanny.

Locals are well aware of the road's notoriety.

Drivers at nearby pubs swap stories about headlights failing, shadows crossing the tarmac and the chilling feeling of unseen passengers in the back seat.

Some long-distance lorry drivers admit to avoiding the bypass altogether at night, even if it adds extra miles to their journey.

Taxi drivers from Sheffield speak of uneasy fears where both passenger and driver felt watched by something just outside the reach of the headlights.

But how do the authorities view it?

Officially, South Yorkshire Police have never endorsed the paranormal reports.

Their line has always been that the bypass is a dangerous stretch of road.

made worse by weather conditions, sharp gradients and driver fatigue.

Yet the story of constables Ellis and Beet, two trained officers left shaken by what they believed they saw, remains a stubborn reminder that not all witnesses are ordinary members of the public.

Even today, when asked about the Stocksbridge case, retired officers maintain a careful neutrality.

They will not call it a hoax, but neither will they confirm belief in the supernatural.

So, are we to believe that people who have lost their lives along this stretch were the victims of vengeful ghosts?

For some locals, the answer is yes.

Others are more cautious, pointing to natural explanations.

Most of the fatalities occurred at night or in poor weather, when fog and frost reduce visibility.

The area is also exposed to high crosswinds that can buffet high-sided vehicles.

In such conditions, a trick of light or a sudden shape at the roadside may be more than enough to convince a tired driver that something otherworldly is in their path.

Psychologists often point to a concept called expectant attention.

When people are already primed with the idea that a location is haunted, their senses become more suggestible.

A shadow, a reflection or a patch of mist may be transformed into an apparition.

The knowledge of the bypass's legends may itself be fueling further sightings.

And yet, there are many witnesses who insist they knew nothing of the road's history until after their encounter.

For them, suggestion cannot explain away what they saw.

At the same time, folklorists argue that ghost stories often serve as cautionary tales.

Roads and bridges are inherently dangerous places, and attributing fatalities to restless spirits can be a way of explaining random tragedy.

Whether one believes in ghosts or not, the act of storytelling becomes a means for communities to make sense of loss.

More recently, efforts have been made to improve the bypass.

Safety barriers, road markings and lighting have all been upgraded, and police patrols remain vigilant.

yet accidents continue to occur.

Each new tragedy feeds into the cycle of belief.

Drivers say the road is cursed.

New accidents only reinforce that perception.

Whether it is the ghosts causing the accidents or the accidents feeding the ghosts, one thing is certain.

The Stocksbridge Bypass has taken on a life of its own in the public imagination.

Our thoughts remain with the friends and families of those who have lost their lives along this otherwise unremarkable stretch of road.

Perhaps the bypass is simply dangerous, perhaps it is something more.

But for those who must drive it at night, every shadow on the verge and every flicker in the headlights carries the same unsettling possibility: that they are not alone.

Bed times, Glorious.