If you are out in your car exploring the countryside this summer, keep your eyes peeled. If you are lucky, you might spot some of Newfoundland's roadside phantoms.
I recently got an e-mail from Charles, whose family had a run-in with a phantom on the road when he was a boy.
"I was young, probably around nine or 10," says Charles. "I asked my brother about this recently and he said he remembered it as well. He is four years older than I am. I remembered the community and my brother remembered the exact spot it had happened."
The sighting took place in Boyd's Cove in the middle of the day,
"An old man was crossing the road in front of the vehicle in front of ours," says Charles. "My parents, brother and I were driving down the road and an old man started slowly walking across the road."
The driver of the vehicle ahead of Charles and his family did not seem to see the old man and did not slow down one bit.
"They just kept on driving while the man kept slowly walking further out into the road," remembers Charles. "The vehicle narrowly missed the man, and he didn't flinch one bit. When we passed him we turned around to look behind us and he had disappeared. "
"Everyone in our vehicle saw it," he states.
Another roadside ghost has been reported at Burnt Islands Park, located to the east of Port aux Basques. One driver saw the figure of a man rush out of the brush and across the road, waving wildly for the pickup to stop. The man put his foot to the brake and slowed down the vehicle, amazed at the sight the figure presented. The hitchhiker was dressed in normal man's clothes, but on his head he was wearing what looked like an old pail, with eye holes cut out to allow him to see.
There are actually two slightly different versions of the ghost of Burnt Islands Park, although in both versions the man is not named. In the first version, the hitchhiker is the ghost of man who once lived in the area. Each time a car would pass along the spot the man's spirit was said to haunt, the ghost would leap out into the middle of the road. In this version, the ghost was said to wear a bucket on his head.
If the car stopped, the phantom would ask for a ride. Sensibly enough, most passers-by would decline, and speed onwards, leaving the ghost standing on the side of the road. This haunting was repeated many times, until one day the ghost vanished for good. Either the spirit got tired of being denied a ride, or else someone finally did stop who did not mind a ghost as a passenger.
The second version of the story offers a little more detail about the ghost's origins, and is also slightly more sinister. According to that version, the ghost was the spirit of a local prankster, who liked to play tricks on whomever he could. One night, the joker decided to scare people driving near Burnt Islands Park. He hid himself back out of sight, off the road, and pulled on a mask. When a car approached, the masked man darted out onto the road, running across it and terrifying the poor driver.
The prankster did this a couple times, scaring a different carload each time. However, on his last fateful attempt to play this trick, he miscalculated his nearness to the car, and the automobile struck him down.
After his death, the man returned to the spot of the accident, appearing in spirit form and still wearing a mask. It is said that if you drive past the location, you can see the ghost of a man with a mask. Good Samaritans beware, however, for the legend says that if you stop, the ghost will get you.
http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/2008/0 ... dside.html
