Ghosts, Highwaymen, and Haunted Roads of England

A Country That Keeps Its Ghosts on the Road

Nowhere in England is far from a road with a story attached to it. Our oldest routes follow Roman survey lines, medieval droving tracks and turnpike trusts, and most of them pass something a little unsettling — a gibbet post, a sunken lane, a coaching inn with a long memory. The road is a natural setting for the supernatural: a place of strangers, of brief meetings, of promises made and never kept, and for centuries the only place where a traveller was truly alone.

What follows is a rough itinerary of places where folklore, criminal history and landscape meet — and where you can stand on the verge and see why the story stuck.

The Highwaymen Who Never Rode On

The golden age of the English highwayman ran from roughly the 1650s to the 1750s, and it left a remarkable amount of haunting behind. Hounslow Heath, west of London, was so notorious that travellers would wait for company before crossing it; Finchley Common and Epping Forest had similar reputations. All three are now quiet suburbs and woodland where the stories have outlived the danger.

Dick Turpin, hanged at York in 1739, is the best known of them all, though the romantic version of his life owes more to an eighteenth-century novel than to the court records. His ghost is claimed at his grave in York, in Epping Forest near the cave that bears his name, and along the old Great North Road. Claude Duval, the "gallant" highwayman hanged at Tyburn in 1670, is said to still ride the lanes of Surrey and Hampshire.

Hertfordshire has the strangest of the lot: Lady Katherine Ferrers of Markyate, remembered as a female highwayman on Nomansland Common. Whether she ever held up a coach is doubtful. That she is said to ride there still is not.

Crossroads, Gibbets and Unquiet Graves

For centuries, English law denied a Christian burial to suicides and executed criminals. Before the Burial of Suicide Act 1823, someone who took their own life could be buried at a crossroads, often with a stake through the body — a practice meant to confuse the ghost and stop it walking. That is why so many "haunted crossroads" sit where three or four lanes meet rather than anywhere more dramatic.

Gibbets were raised at crossroads too, so that the dead might be seen by as many passing travellers as possible. Gibbet Hill above the Devil's Punch Bowl in Surrey is the finest surviving example: it marks where an unknown sailor was murdered in 1786 and where the men convicted of the crime were later hanged in chains. Caxton Gibbet in Cambridgeshire carries the same history in its name.

If you are researching your own area, study a large-scale Ordnance Survey map. Gibbet, gallows and dead in a field or lane name are usually honest descriptions rather than decoration.

Coaching Inns Where Nobody Ever Checks Out

The coaching inn is the other great engine of English road folklore. Before railways, these were the only lit, warm, populated buildings for miles, and a great many of them have a resident ghost.

• The Ostrich Inn, Colnbrook (Berkshire) claims one of the oldest murder legends in the country: guests allegedly dropped through a trapdoor into a vat below.
• The Mermaid Inn, Rye (East Sussex) was a haunt of the Hawkhurst Gang, one of the most violent smuggling outfits of the eighteenth century.
• The Jamaica Inn, Bodmin Moor (Cornwall) is steeped in smuggling folklore so thoroughly that Daphne du Maurier built a novel on it.
• The Red Lion, Avebury (Wiltshire) sits inside a prehistoric stone circle and has a long reputation for cold spots and spectral figures.

Inn ghosts are usually friendly to enquiries. Ask the landlord which room is meant to be haunted and you will often get a better story than anything in print — plus a good dinner.

Vanishing Travellers and the Roads That Remember

Some roads collect stories the way a hedge collects litter. The best known is the A229 near Blue Bell Hill in Kent, where a young woman is said to have been killed on the eve of her wedding in 1965. Motorists have reported a figure in the road, and the tale of the ghostly hitchhiker has been retold there for decades.

Others carry similar reputations. The A666 through Lancashire is nicknamed the "road to hell" for its accident record rather than its ghosts, which has not stopped the tales. The Woodhead Pass between Derbyshire and Yorkshire has been called one of the most haunted routes in England, with reports of phantom coaches and figures on the moor. What these places share is long history, poor visibility and genuine danger: the folklore grows where the road already demands respect.

Practical Notes for the Curious Traveller

• Go in daylight first. A recce in good conditions tells you more about a site than a nervous midnight visit.
• County record offices hold coroners' records, newspaper archives and parish papers. That is where the real story usually sits behind the legend.
• Never trespass on private land; a "haunted" farm track is still a working farm track.
• If a stretch of road has a reputation for accidents, treat that as a warning, not an invitation.

England's haunted roads are not really about the dead. They are about the people who walked them, the crimes committed there, and the stories carried on to the next inn. Follow them carefully and you will find the country's history lying just beneath the surface of the tarmac.