The Stocksbridge bypass revisited (by Andrew Wooding)

A few blog posts ago, Mike told the story of his gardener, Chuck C’s ghostly encounter on the Stocksbridge bypass. The woman in the car in front of him was shaken (understandably so) because a phantom monk (in robes and everything) had allegedly appeared in the passenger seat next to her for part of the journey. Maybe he couldn’t afford a bus ticket.

Mike had also read recently that a motorcyclist, who used the bypass to get to work each day, had problems each time he approached it. Turns out his engine would cut out and only return to full working order once he’d walked his faultering vehicle the full length of the bypass.

If this happened to him every time, it kind of makes you wonder why he didn’t choose another route. (Or maybe he was persistently late for work, and this was the only excuse he could think of. In the words of Michael Jackson: ‘Don’t blame it on the sunshine. Don’t blame it on the moonlight. Don’t blame it on the good times. Blame it on the paranormal goings-on at Stocksbridge bypass that affect the inner workings of my motorbike.’ Or something.)

When you consider both of the above stories – along with the sad fact that the only remotely spooky thing that’s happened to us since we started this blog is Mike’s mileometer packing in as we headed for the bypass in question – can you blame us for deciding that a return trip to Stocksbridge was in order?

If something had happened every single day to this motorcyclist, then the odds were in our favour for a genuine happening on our journey. And, amazingly, we could finally have something worth writing about!

So, with our hopes high, our tank full, and bags of liquorice allsorts in our pockets for sustenance on the way, we set off up the M1 for Stocksbridge. We were gonna catch ourselves a mad monk from the otherworld!

I wish I could say our optimism was rewarded on that fateless night.

I wish I could report back with spine-tingling tales of a mysterious transparent figure roaming the roads and interfering with our innards (the innards of our car, that is).

I wish that the most dramatic thing that happened that evening was slightly more interesting than me losing a pink liquorice allsort (one of my favourites) down the back of Mike’s car seat.

We tried our best, really we did. We must have driven up and down that bypass at least half a dozen times, our eyes darting left, right, and all directions in between for the slightest sign of strange goings-on in bushes, over fences, behind trees ... or anywhere!

But strange goings-on there were none.

Sadly, the only sighting that was vaguely unusual was a lorry parked in a layby, with the word Symphony cryptically painted on its side in large red letters. Was there a full orchestra in there, being carted about from symphony hall to opera house like a stable of horses being ferried about in the back of a van?

Eventually, our curiosity got the better of us, and because there was clearly nowt else to be seen on the road, we pulled up slowly behind the lorry. As we read the writing on the back doors, it all became clear. Turns out Symphony is a company that manufactures mattresses, and the lorry was most likely full of them.

So, unless our ghost-monk was having a secret kip on one of them before his next scheduled stint at terrorising Sheffield motorists, that was probably ‘it’ as far as our ghost-hunting attempts went that evening.

Mike turned his engine off so that we could have a breather from driving backwards and forwards. It was hard work not seeing any ghosts on the highways and byways of Sheffield … and the fact that mattresses were in our immediate vicinity must have sent a subliminal message to our brains that we were tired.

So, with nothing else to do, we chatted in the dark for a while, and Mike regaled me with a repeat telling of his gardener, Chuck C’s story of the phantom visitor in that poor woman’s car. I was thrilled and intrigued by this, until I turned my head and saw a sinister silhouette in the dark behind Mike.

‘M-M-M-M-Mike,’ I stuttered. ‘I hate to tell you this, but … behind you. It’s…’

I stopped in mid-sentence when my intelligence kicked in, correctly telling me that all I was seeing was the head rest sticking up on the back of Mike’s seat. Amazing what a teensy bit of darkness, plus a truly spooky story, can do to one’s powers of suggestibility and imagination. In such conditions, a head rest from Halford’s can so easily be perceived as a deranged dead monk with the ability to sabotage complex 21st century automotive systems. I consoled myself with the fact that this was a simple mistake that anyone could have made ... wasn’t it?

Mike and I decided there and then that we needed to change our strategy. We were clearly getting nowhere. So, instead of looking for ghosts ourselves, maybe we should shift our efforts to seeking out and interviewing people who’ve regularly seen the very things that elude our grasp.

Which is precisely what we did! Please don’t miss our next exciting blog post in which we tell you in great gory detail what happened to us in the basement (not to mention the women’s toilets) of Sheffield Central Library.

Plus my intriguing encounter in the library’s graphic novels section.

Oo-er…