Heavy drizzle greeted me when I packed my camera, tripod and other accoutrements into the car in readiness for my journey down to Stocksbridge in South Yorkshire. To be more accurate it was the infamous Stocksbridge bypass that interested me and in particular the point at which a small lane crosses it by means of a bridge.
As I sped down the M1 in the rain and spray the car stereo played R.E.M. and Michael Stipe sang:
“I’m breaking through,
I’m bending spoons,
I’m keeping flowers in full bloom,
I’m looking for answers from the great beyond.”
OK, so the sentiments may have seemed just a tad ambitious; presumptuous even, but it felt like a good omen on only my second leg of the Odyssey.
I figured it would be best to exit the motorway at junction 37 and head west towards Thurlstone before taking one of the many minor roads south towards Stocksbridge. I had never been to the area before and this was probably not the best way to approach this particular town if you are not sure where you are going.
It seems to be a peculiarity of the area that rather than have signposts at road junctions the roads themselves have names, which is kinda cute but did little to help me read my Ordnance Survey map.
But why, I hear you ask, am I wandering around the southern Pennines in inclement weather looking for a bridge? It’s a fair question and I will briefly explain.
Under the section ‘Ghosts and Hauntings’ on this site I have written in some depth on the remarkable events that have occurred in this outwardly unremarkable area of land in the last two decades, but the salient points are these;
In 1987 the bypass that now skirts the edge of Stocksbridge was nearly completed but the bridge that takes Pearoyd lane over the new road was still under construction. In September of that year there occurred events that terrified four mature men not used to chance encounters with the paranormal.
The first two witnesses were security guards who worked for Constant Securities. On the night of 7th September they drove up to the half finished bridge as they were accustomed to doing. The bridge was constructed in such a way so as to make it impossible for children to climb onto the structure. In other words there was no way up or down. Despite this, the lights from their Landrover picked out a figure on the top of the bridge and the beam seemed to go right through the form. They also described their Landrover as being bounced around. Shortly before they had reached the bridge the men noticed a small group of children dancing around the foot of a pylon, dressed in ‘old fashioned clothes’. This, it should be stressed, was at 12.30 at night.
The profound effect it had on the two guards was far reaching. They had sought help from the church and it wasn’t long afterwards that both men had left their employment.
Police Constables Walton and Bellamy (names changed) were the next witnesses to the disturbing events and theirs was an experience even more unsettling than that of the security guards. The police had been contacted by one of the guards, their boss Michael Lee and the local vicar Stuart Brindley but they were powerless to do much of consequence.
However the two constables did take a drive up to the Pearoyd Lane bridge on the following Saturday night. The moon was almost full and the night was clear as they parked up the police Vauxhall. After noticing some unexplained movement on the bridge that then ceased the policemen sat and waited a few minutes with Constable Walton winding his window down. He described what happened next as, experiencing a feeling as if someone had walked over his grave, and he froze as if he knew something was about to happen. It was.
PC Walton had the distinct feeling that there was someone standing next to the car. He looked round to see the torso of a figure standing right against the driver’s door. He noticed that it seemed to be dressed in clothes from some time past, possibly Victorian, sporting a cravat and what might have been a waistcoat. The face too was momentarily visible.
The apparition could not have approached the car without being noticed and neither could it have instantly relocated on the passenger side of the car, which is what it did.
The final straw for PC’s Walton and Bellamy was the car being struck hard from the rear or side. At this point they drove hurriedly away.
These incidents are but two of many that have been reported in the district, many of which are related in my other thread. It seems clear to me that something in the surrounding landscape is in some way responsible for this focus of strange goings on. I have discussed before the ‘disturbance of land’ factor that may possibly activate hauntings of various kinds but I was struck by something else on this visit that could also be implicated.
You cannot help but notice the high tension power lines in the area. They criss-cross the landscape in an untidy tangle, straddling hill and dale. Very close to the scene of the hauntings is an electricity sub station.
The research carried out by Michael Persinger has demonstrated that strong electrical fields passed across the temporal lobes of the brain will sometimes engender a sensation of a presence. It has been suggested however that the strength of the fields necessary to bring about such effects could not be generated by these cables. I tend to agree but the electromagnetic activity in the atmosphere of such an environment must be considerable.
Can you spot the flaw in this theory about electro magnetic fields, especially in relation to the stories I have just recounted? Well I have just spotted one. In both stories there were two witnesses who experienced the same phenomena.
But let’s play around with the electro magnetic question. What if the fields generated were used by entities from other realms to manifest themselves in our reality. Or a middle way; the EM fields do affect our brains, not by causing subjective hallucinations but by enabling us to experience ghosts that would otherwise remain hidden.
With the drizzle almost stopped I found Pearoyd Lane and followed it to the bridge where the above tales took place. It turned out to be an unprepossessing location, smaller than I had imagined, both the bridge and the bypass. Below was the steelworks that dominates that part of the town, above was the upland area known as Green Moor.
Although I was on the pennines it is quite different here than in the Dales further north. Here the exposed rock and the dry stone walls are blackened by centuries of heavy industry. The little dales are populated by towns and villages that scramble up the hills and then give way to isolated farmsteads and fields of livestock. There is definitely a forlorn feeling about the area. I could quite imagine that at night time or in fog it could turn altogether more perturbing.
Since writing previously on Stocksbridge I have learned that the area around Pearoyd Lane has long held a reputation for being strange and unearthly.
I would have liked to wander along the public footpath near the bridge on Pearoyd Lane and explore some more of the myriad of tiny roads that meander across the hills but time was against me. Reluctantly I turned the car around and headed back whence I came.
The hauntings in the area have quietened down in the last few years it seems and I didn’t really expect to experience much but I’m glad I went and had a look at the spot where one of the most alarming true ghost stories occurred in recent times.
And if you are wondering who took the photographs of Earl Tosti on his car and at Pearoyd Lane, well there was this quiet guy off to a fancy dress do in Dickensian togs. I asked him to take the snap and he duly obliged…..never uttered a word mind. Odd.
Toby - paranormal researcher