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Chris Dawkins' Encounter

Exactly two weeks after Ian Sharpe's encounter (to within the hour, in fact) and barely before the press furore surrounding his encounter had died down - incredibly - it happened all over again!

In what I at first feared might be a 'copycat' incident, another lone motorist heading for Maidstone, 19-year-old Christopher Dawkins of Coxheath, reported an experience that mirrored Ian Sharpe's, except for the fact that it had taken place further up the Hill, in the heart of Blue Bell Hill village - some distance away from the clustered group of encounters that preceded it.

First again in print with the news was the Kent Today (23 November) which hurriedly squeezed in a report at the foot of its front page ('Blue Bell Hill Ghost Seen Again'). The article, and the expanded versions that would follow it, described a virtually identical encounter to Ian Sharpe's. The incident had occurred at 10.55 p.m. on Sunday 22 November, a week after the 19 November anniversary of the 1965 crash.

Mr Dawkins, who had been on his way home, was just passing the Robin Hood Lane junction in the village (southbound) when, suddenly, a woman reportedly wearing a red scarf ran into the path of his Toyota car and vanished beneath the vehicle.

In words remindful of Ian Sharpe's, Dawkins described the encounter: "She ran in front of the car. She stopped and looked at me. There was no expression on her face.

"Then I hit her and it was as if the ground moved apart and she went under the car.

"I thought I had killed her because it wasn't as if she were see [sic] through or anything. She was solid - as real as you are."²⁰

In a state of shock, he got out to search for the injured woman, only to find she had disappeared. At first assuming the woman had managed to run off without his seeing her, Dawkins found a public telephone box and rang his father. After the call, he had second thoughts, it having occurred to him that the woman's body might be beneath his car. However, he could not bring himself to look.

Upon his father's arrival, Dawkins broke down. His father promptly arranged to phone the police from the house of a village resident, Marian Warburton, who later attested to the distress the incident had caused the young man.

Police, who were likewise impressed with the integrity of the witness, as they had been with Ian Sharpe, searched the area but could find no trace of the woman, and no damage to the car. Their conclusion, once again, would be that the incident would have to be put down to "you know what" - the ghost. And the ghost, again according to the Kent Today, was said to be that of JL.

Hit or Myth?

Three remarkably similar witness accounts (the latest two under good observational conditions), each supported by police involvement: together they posed the exciting possibility that something genuinely anomalous was occurring on Blue Bell Hill. But what precisely? Could it really be, as the press supposed, that these motorists had encountered the ghost of a young woman killed here in a car crash in 1965?

Unfortunately, even given the level of detail present in Ian Sharpe's case, such encounters are, by their very nature, both sudden and fleeting, allowing for any number of possible interpretations, let alone a positive identification of the 'ghost'. In fact, there are a host of difficulties in relating the encounters to the victims of the 1965 crash, or to any other tragic event on the Hill - despite the relative closeness (in Ian Sharpe's case) to the scene of the accident, and the admittedly intriguing proximity in date to the 19 November anniversary of the crash, which for the press, along with the prior (1974) naming of JL, provided all the proof the press required to once again identify the ghost as JL.

For one, descriptively, the ghost-girl did not match any of the crash victims; and in one fascinating case I would later hear, the girl was encountered back in 1934 - which, if accepted as true, demolishes the 1965 crash connection in one sweep. Finally, as further cases (at Blue Bell Hill and elsewhere) came to light - describing very similar characters and a virtually identical pattern of behaviour, it  became increasingly clear that there was something more to these encounters than the simple ghost-as-tragic-spirit-of-the-dead case that is the traditional interpretation of ghostly events - something that was bound more closely to the folklore of the Phantom Hitch-Hiker and its deeper folk roots than had hitherto been recognized. 

What the Blue Bell Hill series was beginning to reveal was a genuine and widely reported phenomenon and 'explanation' that was more compelling than anything an occasionally sensationalist press could serve up in any individual case.

To begin with, the nature of the encounter itself - the ghost throwing herself in front of the vehicle - hardly stood in my mind as an attempt at meaningful communication we might expect of a returning or earthbound soul. In these cases, the action seemed purposeful and intelligently motivated, suggestive of free will. And yet this bizarre behaviour seemed to be enacted in accordance to a fairly strict pattern:

All sounded very much like the idealized Phantom Hitch-Hiker ‘script’ (see The Phantom Hitch-Hiker). Low and behold, in his book The Evidence for Phantom Hitch-Hikers, Michael Goss observes that while there is a world of difference between what he terms the 'Spectral Jaywalker' habit and that of the PHH, not infrequently these two motifs can be found in the same road-ghost story cycle. While, on the basis of the above, I came to disagree regarding the extent of their differences (finding that the 'true life' encounters actually obeyed many of the 'folk' conventions), the case at Blue Bell Hill certainly seemed to bear this out, with 'real' encounters occurring against the backdrop of an existing Phantom Hitch-Hiker tradition.

What differences there were between the Hitch-hiker and Jaywalker themes lay with the fact that whereas most PHH accounts are apocryphal (with a few possible exceptions) Jaywalker cases are generally well-supported by named witnesses, and often by some form of independent corroboration (either through police involvement or, in the case of a few incidents at Blue Bell Hill, other witnesses). The latter also tend to be more prosaic, lacking the suspiciously artistic or romantic embroidery that has made the Phantom Hitch-hiker the poignant and memorable tale so dutifully passed on and adapted to new locations.

The close link between the two behavioural styles raised some interesting questions: could the PHH in fact represent a romanticized version of real paranormal events, in which the hitch-hiking habit was introduced as a benign alternative to the graphic (and sinister) 'phantom road-accident' scenario? Or, in light of the 'reality' of haunting cases such as Blue Bell Hill that support PHH traditions, could that maligned and improbable behaviour - the hitch-hiking feature - as claimed by witnesses in a very few other cases - also be true?

In time - largely as a result of the newspaper coverage of 1992, and some private leads, I would get to talk to a number of other people who were willing to put their names to similar experiences on BBH. Some of the accounts would agree well in detail - whether in description, or location, or timing with the 'big three'- with most conforming well with the tentatively identified ‘script’ above - certainly enough to convince me that this was a real, and strangely predictable (in a famously unpredictable field), feature of these events, and prompting me to agree with Tom Harber’s words when he told Michael Goss: "I have never found such a well-tallied set of accounts."

To pick just a few examples (in the interest of space-saving, and to protect the integrity of the full manuscript to this site!), briefly:

Darren & Christine Green [name changed] c.1984/5 - after 10.30pm. were returning home via Blue Bell Hill. As they rounded a bend at the foot of the Hill, onto the Rochester Road towards Aylesford, they were confronted with the sight of a girl waiting for them. Darren braked hard, but it was too late to stop. Quickly reaching the spot where the girl stood, there was suddenly no sign of her. Neither got out of the car. Darren engaged the car's reversing light to check the lane, but there was no sign of the girl, whom they estimated to be around 13-14yrs. She had been wearing a lightish top; she had bare legs, and white ankle socks (neither had any knowledge of Maurice Goodenough’s encounter, to which the description bears an uncanny similarity).

Allen & Gladys Painter. 13 July 1974. Time: c.12.30-01.00am - the same night/early morning of the Goodenough incident; and very close to the same location, raising the intriguing possibility that the two incidents might be linked. Mr and Mrs Painter were driving home from visiting Mrs Painter's daughter in Maidstone, and were driving up the northbound carriageway of the A229 at Blue Bell Hill, when Mrs Painter saw a girl run out (from left) into the road ahead, where she turned to face them. She immediately alerted her husband, who saw nothing. A brief argument ensued, which resulted in Mrs Painter, who was by now convinced they were going to hit the girl, reached over and pulled on the steering wheel - an action that invited a terse response from her husband, who still saw nothing. Mrs Painter (who, according to her daughter, was so impressed by her experience that she "never stopped talking about it", even to her death only a month before Ian Sharpe's encounter) described the girl as "youngish", with "big eyes", and longish hair (light-coloured), who was dressed in a light blouse and light-coloured skirt or dress.

And it isn’t just at Blue Bell Hill that we find these encounters, and the same script. Late one night in 1978, for example, Shawn and Geri Lape were driving past Resurrection Cemetery in Chicago - a location renowned as the destination of a PHH - Resurrection Mary - when a girl dressed in white ran out in front of the car (see Introduction and link account).

And there are many other examples of events of precisely the same pattern, involving (allthough not exclusively) ‘White Lady’ accident victims (see Cases) - which together firmly underline that such encounters - their pattern, and timing (frequently around midnight) - are not the exclusive domain of BBH witnesses; or purely instances of autosuggestion - of witnesses - even unconsciously - fabricating an encounter arising from familiarity with BBH’s legend. While this is true for many, some witnesses clearly had no knowledge of BBH’s reputation at the time of their encounter, removing them, I think, from accusations of suggestibility, leading to ‘ostension’ - folklorists’ term for the process whereby a ‘real’ event is patterned on an urban legend theme - a case of ‘fact’ mirroring fiction.

No, there appeared to be something genuinely strange going on, and this had less to do with any accepted cause (such as the 1965 crash) than the stand-alone folklore of the PHH itself. 

CLICK HERE for table of sightings

Set within the context of cases from elsewhere, the timing of encounters suggesting a link with the 11 p.m. time of the 1965 crash also falls apart; this coincidentally falling into the crudely 11 p.m. -1 a.m. frame that seems to characterize many of these encounters, wherever they occur. 

Hitchin' A Ride?

If this were not enough to diminish, if not demolish, the links with the 1965 crash-as-cause, then one BBH witness case, if accepted, surely does, since it occurred back in 1934. The situation is greatly complicated by the fact that it is one of four actual hitch-hiker cases I have for Blue Bell Hill. The reason I’m not going to be spending very much time on them here is twofold: one, although they fit the same pattern as the Jaywalker cases, they are a vastly different prospect to assess, and, frankly, accept. Secondly, they behave largely as the folklore predicts, with the ‘ghost’ vanishing without being directly observed. 

Only one - the case of Mr Grant  and companion (c. 1967/8) - had the girl vanishing from the back seat, and by strong inference therefore a ghost. The others, including the 1934 example, have the girl absencing herself when the motorist’s back is turned. Remember, the girl vanishes without being observed - but this also leaves open the probability that she was a real person, who, for whatever reason, was behaving in strict accordance with PHH lore. In this example, Mr Weller [name changed], now in his 80s, was confronted by a girl at 11 p.m., standing in the middle of the road (a common feature) at the Lower Bell crossroads, who wished to be taken to Burham (a village a few miles west; in the direction he had just came). Acceding to her request, she mounted the pillion seat of his motorcycle, and he dropped her off in Church Street. As he turned his cycle for the return trip, he glanced back, to find that she had disappeared. It means little, perhaps, but it does fit the general pattern of encounters at Blue Bell Hill and the PHH script, many years before either was to achieve any kind of significant public profile. And if we were still intent on looking for a traditional violent-death-type cause, we can do no better than the 1916 murder of a 20-yr-old Blue Bell Hill resident, Emily Trigg, who lived at Providence Row, Blue Bell Hill (since demolished). Emily, who worked as a domestic servant in Rochester, was found murdered in Bridge Wood at the top of BBH; and was finally laid to rest in Burham churchyard - in Church Street (demolished 1983). Folklore is present here again: a variation on the home-coming PHH, Beardsley & Hankey's Version C Hitch-Hiker - the girl who begins or ends her journey at a graveyard or cemetery. The deeper one delves into this subject, the stranger and more fascinating it becomes. 

Another case from Blue Bell Hill (autumn, c.1971) - that of James Skene - appears to be the Rosetta Stone of PHH cases, combining the two aspects of the phenomenon, starting as a prospective collision event when a girl appeared in his path (on the new A229, then under construction, in the vicinity of the Lower Bell), prompting him to swerve around her and stop. Intending to scold her for nearly causing an accident, he pushed open the passenger door, when, before he had even said anything she was (in his words) "suddenly in the car" (i.e. jumped in uninvited). The girl, whom he estimated to be in her twenties, wore a dark dress, which appeared to be velvet. In a departure from most folk versions that describe a pretty girl in white, he said she was “not stunning, not attractive - a plain girl”. She asked to be taken to Chatham; he was heading for Maidstone. He started to point out that she was on the wrong side of the road but, on reflection, he decided to turn the car around.   

Although the girl did not seem to be in any way flustered, Mr Skene's first thoughts were that she might be in some trouble, making some sense of her presence at the spot at that hour by supposing that she had had a bad experience in another car and jumped out. Not best pleased at the prospect of taking her all the way to Chatham he nevertheless felt that if he had refused her the lift she might have ended up in more trouble. In any case, he said, "she just sat there."

Resigned to the task, he drove the girl to Chatham, dropping her off outside 'the old Chatham cinema'²². He cannot recall the precise reason she chose to alight there, whether she asked to be let out there, or if that was simply as far as he was prepared to take her. As far as he can remember, she said nothing after asking to be taken to Chatham.

He does remember that the street where he dropped the girl was lit. On the corner was a gateway with a metal trellis gate, which was in place. After letting her out (whether she opened the door herself or not, again, he can't recall), he reversed around the corner to turn the car around, noticing in the process that the girl had gone. There was nowhere for her to go.

Thinking her disappearance odd, Mr Skene nevertheless thought no more of the matter at the time, having no knowledge at the time of the Blue Bell Hill ghost. The most widely publicized encounter, Maurice Goodenough's in 1974, was still some three years away), and it was only then that he came to ponder the incident as possibly something out of the ordinary. As he told me, if he had any inkling at the time that she might have been a ghost, he would probably have scarpered! 

Again, we can suspend judgment; although we can note that the two Hitch-Hiker events tally in destination with those highlighted early in the case history as the reputed destination of the ghost-girl: Maidstone, Burham, Chatham; and other instances, Walderslade, at the top of the Hill. 

The reason why these cases are more difficult to accept is that we have a - not perfect - but more or less viable attempt at explanation for the collision events - which are, after all, rather fleeting events with a figure in the road that has no proven substance. And this has to do with the hallucinatory state we are all prone to fall into during prolonged or habitual night-driving. Limitations to the reader's patience precludes expansion on the premise here, but one factor common to just about all BBH witnesses - more so than prior knowledge of the case - is that they were on their way home, after work, after a social event - all perhaps tired, winding down mentally; the late hour, night-time conditions, comfortable surroundings of the car, the quieter road conditions all perhaps contributing to a suspension of conscious thought - that lapse into that mindless autopilot experience all drivers are familiar with. Under these conditions, the Unconscious mind plays a greater role - that source of intuition, inspiration, submerged memories, and so on - which also happens to be the part of us most susceptible to suggestion.

One idea is that even the unconscious recognition that somewhere could be haunted could act as the trigger for an hallucinatory experience of a quality that simulates and complements reality. Personally, I don’t think it’s as simple as that; I think there must be some other trigger at work, perhaps something genuinely objective. Else, how would persons with no knowledge of the locale fall for exactly the same experience? But there is no doubt in my mind that this unconscious state is an important factor in the experience, and most other apparitional experiences. This mechanism may also in part account for why it is that we have a preponderance of lone male drivers and female ‘ghosts’. Carl Gustav Jung, the noted psychologist, noted that the unconscious of the individual presents itself in the dreamscape as a figure of the opposing gender. This he termed anima if the subject is male, and is represented by an archetypal female form. For a woman, her unconscious presents itself as a male figure, the animus. Surely it is significant that those most susceptible to ‘highway hypnosis’ - the lone drivers, are the ones having most of the experiences - in folklore and ‘fact’? While clearly increasing horrific effect, could the common feature of the phantom locking eyes with the driver - a literally haunting effect - represent the unconscious of the individual recognizing itself, or at least its function in these experiences? 

Of course, I won’t pretend the hypnotic mechanism and ghost-as-anima case addresses all the problems; it doesn’t easily answer how, in Maurice Goodenough’s case, the illusion could carry over to the ‘wrapping’ of a girl in a car blanket; or the Hitch-Hiker events, if valid; or even the multiple witness and mixed-gender witness events. But it's a start; it aids in understanding how something as seemingly defunct and invalid as folklore can intrude on modern society in such a dramatic and apparently real manner, as it would again in January 1993 with a bizarre new twist on the PHH/Jaywalker saga (Hekate on the Hill), and why it is that Folklore & Myth, even beyond the seemingly modern form of the PHH, is replete with exotic femmes fatales beguiling lonely - frequently male - travellers, and leading them out of their way.

Ultimately, all we can say for Blue Bell Hill is that the evidence - the strength of witness testimony, the subtleties of detail that emerged from the case as a whole, and the remarkable similarities to events elsewhere - suggests that something of an anomalous nature appears to periodically manifest there. What that something is we may never know for certain. But whatever future research here, or in other cases, may throw up, the most enduring interpretation, as it has been the world over, is likely to be the ghost-as-spirit-of-the-dead one. Ghosts, and our fascination for them are, at very least, a reflection of our own mortality and our hopes for its continuation beyond the apparent finality of death.

The popularity of the Blue Bell Hill story surely lies with this, but it also has an added dimension: a lesson - one that is embodied by the Phantom Hitch-Hiker tale at its heart, but particularly in the real, tragic, and premature deaths of a young bride-to-be and two of her companions in a car crash here in 1965: that life, for all its hopes and expectations, is ultimately a walk along a precipice, with the possibility of its ending at any moment. Live it to the full, and savour every moment.

Notes & References

Read more about the Ghost of Blue Bell Hill and other mysteries in Fortean Times, Britain's premier publication dealing with strange phenomena and curiosities. 

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