Loremen Podcast - Loremen S5Ep52 - The Grey Hitchhiker

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

The terrifying tale of the Grey Hitchhiker (or the Gray Hitcher, for Americans) comes from that spooky road, The Notorious A38. Over several decades, drivers have made the mistake of stopping for a hitchhiker who does not obey the laws of hitchhiking (or nature). If you're driving between Tiverton and Taunton, you might see the Grey Hitchhiker. If you've reached Wrangway, you're going the wrong way. Listener, it's time to "get your gilets on" because your spine is about to be tingled. Come see the Loreboys LIVE in spooky West Norwood Cemetery on Friday 11th October 2024 (2024): https://choose-se27-comedy-festival.designmynight.com/66968247e76bce06372992c8/loremen-podcast-live-recording OR In Manchester at GRUB on Sunday 20th October (also 2024) at 2pm https://www.seetickets.com/event/loremen-live/grub/3168584 OR Back in Balham on Sunday 17th November on "Who Knew It? with Matt Stewart" https://www.designmynight.com/london/pubs/balham/the-bedford/who-knew-it-with-matt-stewart-live?t=tickets This episode was edited by Joseph Burrows - Audio Editor. LoreBoys nether say die! Support the Loremen here (and get stuff): patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen Check the sweet, sweet merch here... https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631 @loremenpod youtube.com/loremenpodcast www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm James Shake Shaft. And I'm Alistair Beckett King. Boy oh boy Alistair, it's getting back into spoopy season and I've got a very spooky tale for us today. I'm very excited and for the record still do not endorse the use of the word spoopy. Continue please, James. It is from Friend of the Show, Ghosts over Britain by Peter Moss.

And it is The Grey Hitchhiker. Great title this time, James. I'm very excited. Oh, you should be. To listen to another Shakespeare joint. Is that what we call this? Yeah, I think so. I All you should be. To listen to another Shake Shaft joint. Is that what we call these? Yeah I think so. I'm really excited about this one to be honest. I nearly texted you to say how excited I was about this but I thought...

You nearly warned me to be excited in advance. Exactly. Because Alistair, I've gone back to your friend and mine... Ghost over Britain. True accounts of modern hauntings. Which is the subtitle that I genuinely had never realised. Yeah, we'd never really got to the subtitle, did we? Because we were just making that ehh ehh ehh ehh ehh noise. That noise from machine guns when you were a kid.

When I noticed the subtitle, like a couple of days ago, it felt like it had just appeared there. Like it wasn't even there before. You got Berenstain bared. Absolutely. They died in that prison. Yes, by Peter Moss. Ghosts over Britain. And I was lured to a chapter called the Phantom Hitchhiker. And I read the tale and boy, oh boy, it delivers. So I'm just going to get straight into it. Are you ready?

Yes, absolutely. If you've got a, some sort of series of, oh, what's that product? Deep heat pads lined up on your spine because it is going to be so tingled and chilled. Oh, thank you for the warning. Yes. I'll just apply those now. You better. You too, the listener, get your gilets on. Is that one of our catchphrases, get your gilets on? Cause I keep becoming a crapper because I, you keep saying things and I say that's not a catchphrase. And then the listeners in the discord are like, you've been saying that for years. Get your

A-giles on. Do we say that? I haven't, I don't think I've said it so like lackadaisely or, you know, so fun. So fun filled. I've warned people that A-giles may be in order because this is going to be so, so chilling. All right, let's do this. So Alistair, we're going to be so, so chilling. All right, let's do this. So Alistair, we're going to go to the A38. The spookiest motorway. Is it a motorway? It's an A road.

It's not an A road. It predates the motorway. In fact, it's referred to in Go Sovereign Britain as the notorious A38. I remember from its rap career. Yes, it runs from Derby to Cornwall. And if you pop that into your Google Maps now, pinch to zoom in on a section between Oak and Taunton. Hold on a second here. This is more a metaphor.

Oh. You don't really necessarily need to do it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's where I would have been during the Aurora Borealis. I couldn't see. Well, I may have been on the M5 looking at the map. Well, yeah, you wouldn't have taken the A38. The M5 totally superseded the notorious A38. I would have avoided the notorious A38.

But I couldn't see anything because of all of the very bright lights on the motor. Figuratively, drop that little man to get the street view image. And you may well see a middle-aged man in a gray coat with a torch trying to hitch a lift. Probably only see him if Google maps shows up ghosts. So we're going to go to the little dropdown menu where you can look at the older versions of street view. That is a function that I think I am the most fascinated with way more than my wife.

Cause whenever I send her screen grabs of our old street with our own car in it, set outside our old house, she is not bothered, but do click on it anyway. And if you could go back to 1970, the summer of, I'm probably going to ditch this frame and device, to be honest. Yeah. Does Google Maps go back to the summer of 1970? Shh. Shh. It sounds like it ahead of time to me.

Shh. All right. And if you, on that, I'm actually sticking with it for a minute. If you could... Oh, so we're still in the conceit that we're doing this on Google Maps, yeah? Yeah. Find a news agent and see if you can zoom in to the newsagent window and see a copy of the Western Morning News from August 1970. It's there, but it's probably blurred out because there's a face on the front page. Yeah, or you sort of keep swooping down the road.

Keep accidentally walking down to the betting shop and then coming back. Is it like being a ghost using Google maps of the past? Is that more, it might feel like to be a ghost. Probably not really. We haven't got time for this, right? Yeah, probably not really. That's what I would say, no. In that Western morning news, Mrs. Kay Swithenbank has been interviewed.

Yes. All right. Mrs. K Swithenbank. She's been interviewed about her experience. What happened? She was driving home to Taunton from the village of Oak and she rounded a bend near the Heatherton Grange hotel. And as she rounded that bend, she found stood in the middle of the road, a middle-aged man

wearing a long gray coat, this face averted and a torch pointed at the ground. She had no time to break. So she swerved violently and she must have missed the guy because there was no impact, but she pulled up and looked around. The road was empty in both directions. So far, so hallucination. But if you could move forward a couple of weeks on that Google maps pass mode, and again,

somehow find a news agent. Is it the same news agents or do I need to find a different one? Probably the same news. You're looking for the same paper, the Western morning news through the window. Probably an easy way of doing this. But if you did do that, you would find that two other motorists had seen that figure and had similar experiences on that spot. Oh, so they read the first account and thought, that's what happened to me. And they wrote into the Western Morning News. Is that the name?

The Western Morning News, yes. And two even more motorists claim to have seen the figure in a place called White Ball, which is four miles to the west the figure in a place called white ball, which is, is four miles to the West. There's a place called white ball. There's also a place called red ball, white ball, white ball and red ball. Is this place just a massive pool table? Maybe though of those two other motorists who saw it, one of them was a motorcyclist who was so affected that he fell off his bike and broke his arm because of this grey man. Oh, I found white ball and red ball. Okay.

Is it like a pink ball or something like just down the road? Like they mixed or something? I think. I'm seeing like a rosé ball. Oh, rosé. Oh yeah. Apple door, Samford, Peverell, you plow man or a plowman. It was probably actually called, but it looks like you plow man. And there's Nicholas Shane. That's just two guys. Nicholas Shane. Nicholas Shane. There's some good names around here.

I'm still on Google maps. Yeah. What you're seeing? North Curry. North Curry. Yes. North Curry. Sorry. I've just seen? North Curry. North Curry. Yes. North Curry.

Sorry. I've just seen Curry Mallet. All right. Some good names around this area. It was Timmy Mallet's cooking program. Oh, near Dig, and we've got Digoland, of course. Digoland, Edvin. Of course.

I'm saluting Digoland. And Britham Bottom. Anyway, these wonderful place names, Culm Davy, for example, they're all great, but they're not what happens next on this story, Alastair, because another witness has entered the story. Mr. Harold Unsworth is a long distance lorry driver based in Exeter. And reading these reports from the 1970, from around August, 1970, he

decided to break his 12 year silence. Wow. Yeah. And he wrote into the Exeter Express and Echo. Is that two newspapers or one newspaper with a confusing name? It's one newspaper with a confusing name. And it seems to, it's not even, as far as I can tell, it's not like an amalgamation in halfway through their lives. Yeah.

It's not like a Sunday paper situation where it's the echo during the week and then something else. No? As far as I could tell, it's called the Express and Echo. Okay. And it has been since the late 1800s. Far be it from me to tell you how to run a local newspaper. What do I know with my big city attitude and ways?

You're just peering at them through Google Maps images that don't exist? Yeah, I don't even know you. Oh, it was a result of a merger. Was it? Yeah, it was a merger between the Western Echo and the Devon Evening Express. There you go. And in 1909, it contained a column titled, Womanland. Whoa!

Woman is... Wow, I mean, we've all heard of Diggerland. Imagine. I can only imagine what one does Womanland promises. Well, to be fair, it sounds like it was written by Exeter's first woman counsellor. It was written by Exeter's first woman. Counsellor. Edith Splatt. I'm sorry, I don't feel like I showed sufficient respect to Ms Splatt.

But she did, she reported on like suffragette protests and stuff. Anyway, yeah, so in the Exeter Express and Echo, Harold Unsworth wrote in to describe how he had been driving to Cullompton. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just down from Diggerland. At 3am and he was passing the Blackbird Inn, which is one mile west of Mrs K Swithenbank's sighting, and he stopped to pick up a hitchhiker, a middle-aged man in a grey or cream Macintosh who was carrying a torch. It was pouring rain and Mr. Unsworth decided to give this bedraggled man,

who didn't have a hat on, who was soaking wet through. No hat. No hat. In the past as well. When I think it seemed like people were giving out hats. Yeah, and prior to the 1970s, if you went out without a hat, you just died. Well, yeah. You would just die from hat lack. Yeah. He's got a lack of hat.

So again, so he decides to give this guy a lift. And this hitcher, it says, appeared by his speech to be well educated and he asked to be dropped in Holcomb, Holcomb, which is four miles away at the old beam bridge. According to Peter Moss in Ghosts Over Britain, he described with the most gruesome delight, the accidents that had happened at that bridge. Now that is not a subject for humor, but that A38 is still an accident black spot. And in fact, the beam bridge in recently made a petition to try and get the road to be made safer by putting in like traffic calming measures, speed cameras

and what's not, but even back then to now it is a notoriously dangerous part of the road. So anyway, long distance Harold was keen to be rid of this kind of odd ball. So he dropped him at this spot. And then a few days later, Unsworth was driving past the Blackbird in again, in the pouring rain and the hitcher was there. James is raining right now where I am. Sudden heavy rain came down just as you said that. Is there a guy in a gray Mac outside with a torch who's absolutely satched?

Absolutely satched. Absolutely satched! He's satched he was. So Unsworth picked him up again. He picked him up again? No, come on, fool me once. And then the hitcher wanted to drop in at the same spot. So that's odd. That's very strange.

That's not how hitchhiking works usually. Not really, no. You can't hitchhike a commute. Two times, pick the guy up,culiar guy, same space, same spot. Yeah. Could be a bit of a coincidence. Then a month later, Alistair there he was again. Same rain, same torch, same such gray man.

So it just occurred to me for the sake of American listeners, we're talking about a flashlight, I guess. Yes. Not a flaming torch. It would go out in the rain. It would go out in the rain. Yes. It's like a flashlight, like, like an X in the rain. It would go out in the rain.

Yes. It's like a flashlight, like an X-File might hold. An X-File. Yeah. Like one of the X-Files would hold. Yeah. He still did the same weird conversation about all the accidents in this place. Stop being weird, hitchhiker.

Stop being weird. So Andworth dropped him off. To be honest, he's freaked out now. He's worried he's acquired an oddball and he's like, I'm not, I'm not going to pick him up again. Nobody is making you pick him up to be fair. And he kept, he passed the spot because it was kind of on his long distance lorry journey and he passed it regularly over the following months. The guy was gone. The guy wasn't there.

It all seemed fine. James, the rain has stopped here and the sun just came out. all seemed fine. James, the rain has stopped here and the sun just came out. Everything seemed fine until November 1958. It's another rainy night and the grey hitcher is there again. No, why would you stop? He's got such little crack. But he did stop.

He did pick up the man and he drove him to the same spot again and had the same macabre chit chat. But this time when they stopped at the bridge the hitchhiker did something different. The hitcher asked Unsworth to wait while he went to collect some cases as he needed to go further up the road. So Unsworth waited in his lorry, 20 minutes in the rain in the dark but the man didn't come back. So ends a slight F this. He drove on probably muttering a what a weirdo. Yeah.

Or some sort of equivalent 1958 phrase that cats not. Sorry. Was it Harlem Jazz singer? We don't know that he was on distance truck driver. We simply don't know. Yes. This is very uncopacacetic, he said. Yeah.

That's, that is hep-gan slang from the 50s. Copacetic means all good. Oh, it's not that. This is the un-copacetic. This does not give me life. He would say if he was nowadays, presumably, but he gets three miles down the road. He can just see through the pouring rain. There's a guy waving him down and he's like,

ah, it's wet, it's really bad weather today. It's probably some car, some motorist whose car's broken down or what have you. I'll pull over and give him a hand. I'm a kind guy. I'm a kind unswerver. Does this guy ever make his deliveries on time? I don't think so. This is why he's bringing the lorry back at 3am.

So he started, so he starts slowing the lorry down and sort of moving over to the side of the road. And as his headlights go over the guy who's waving him, it's the grey hitcher. He's three miles down the road. That's impossible. You couldn't travel three miles in 20 minutes. Unsworth's not seen any cars go past in that time. It's not like he's got a lift or he's got a secret motorbike.

Unsworth did not stop this time. He's learned his lesson. He slammed back on the accelerator, steered away from the man who lipped in front of the van at the last minute. Unsworth braked, the lorry started to jackknife, but he managed to keep it under control, he stopped and got out. And the gray hitcher is standing in the middle of the road, shaking his fist and swearing at him.

And then the gray man turned and vanished and Unsworth got back in his lorry, probably quite shaken and got the truck out of there. Yeah. And he never saw, he never saw the hitcher again. And he kept silent about that for 12 years until he heard the reports of Mrs. K Swithinbank. Peter Moss points out in Ghosts over Britain, it is impossible even to guess at the identity of the apparition as so many motorists and pedestrians have died on this stretch alone. Perhaps one day in a different manifestation, it may add another clue

as to why this pathetic figure seems doomed to seek a lift so desperately from passing vehicles. Chilling, James. Chilling. I'm burning right through my gilet. I'm shivering it to pieces. Can I also mention the drawings, the illustrations by Angela Lua in this edition of Ghosts Over Britain are fantastic. I'm going to put, put that up for you there. I held it up to the microphone. Oh, yeah. It looks like a, is that a Lumograph?

Is that what I mean? Sort of, he seems to be glowing. He does almost seem to be glowing. There's, that's the bridge. That's a photograph. That's a photograph of the bridge. Not a particularly spooky bridge listener. Well, now it is now.

You know, there's some ghost who's trying to find his cases. So there you go, Alistair. Wow. You can probably unpeel those deep heats now. Thank you. That's the noise I imagine that those deep heats now. Thank you. That's the noise I imagine that would make. Yep, I reckon. Oh, terrifying.

And what's the moral of the story? Do you think don't, don't help people? Don't try not to hit people with your vehicle. I don't know. I don't know. In case they're a ghost. I think if you've started giving a ghost hitchhiker a lift, you've got to keep going. Yeah. Yeah. They hate it. If you, if you dangle a lift and then with a draw, they don't like that.

Yeah. If you drive off without them, they don't like that. Not at all. So I mean, we don't know why, we don't know what the timeline is there. It could be evidently by the 1970s, it is a ghost, but it could have been that the first couple of times it wasn't, it was just, it was an oddball. And then they very fast at running. Oh, so you think when the, when the truck driver, the lorry driver saw the man, it might have been a real man, a living man.

Maybe maybe the first couple were a real man. And then after the months, it turned into a ghost, a g-g-g-g-ghost. And then when he was like, I've got my, my unfinished business, my cases, and then he drives off and leaves him. And then the ghost sort of appears down the road, dives on, jumps in front of him and becomes the ghost at that point. So you think his unfinished business was picking up some cases? From under a bridge.

Yeah. From under a bridge. Easily. It's hard to tell what's important to a ghost, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. You don't know how you're going to offend a ghost. It's best leave well alone. That story lived up to its promising title. It had everything. It had famous hip hop artist, the notorious A38. It Had a spectral hitchhiker. Had the world's first feminist theme park, Womanland. Yes. That is everything.

That is everything that you could ask for. Everything you could want. So are you ready to score this? Yes I am. Terrifying tale. Okay, so first up, boom, going in hard, supernatural, right? Very high. We don't know quite how many supernatural encounters we're dealing with because of your

theory, James, that the first encounters or the early encounters might have been with a human man. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. But then in 1970, we've got reports from, I'm looking at my notes, but it's mostly, I'm writing, my notes are all about Street View. Right. No, we've got Mrs. Kay Swithenbank 1970.

We've got two other motorists who saw the figure at the same spot and a further two motorists, including the motorcyclist who broke his arm and the person that saw the ghost's profile. That's five. So five, even excluding you plan this so well. I don't know if listeners can tell I've done a bit of research for this one. All right. Yep. It's five out of five for Supernatural. Five encounters, minimum five encounters with the ghost. Minimum five. Right then. Let's roll it into naming.

Okay. Swithin Bank. Swithin Bank. Mrs. K. Swithin Bank. Mr. Harold Unsworth. Curry Mallet. I know Curry Mallet was something I read on Google Maps and not part of the story, but come on we all enjoyed Curry Mallet. It's still a name. Yeah. It's still a name.

Pick me with your Curry Mallet. Edith Splatt. That's what happens if you get hit with a curry mallet. Yeah. Yes. Womanland. And womanland. Yeah.

The Exeter Espresso and Echo. Co. Co. Nice. It's just a name. I think they're pretty good though. Come on. Red ball, white ball. Oh yeah.

Red ball and white ball. Yeah. Yes. It's good. I don't know if I can just give you two fives in a row. Can I give you two fives in a row? Oh, come on. Red ball, white ball. Oh yeah. Red ball and white ball. Yeah. Yes, it's good. I don't know if I can just give you two fives in a row. Can I give you two fives in a row? Yeah, I think so. I think you should.

All right. There's two fives in a row. But these, the next category is better be pretty impressive. Oh, in which case, next category is absolutely satch. Absolutely satched. Well, you've appealed to me by using a Northeastern idiom. Are you very satched, James? These past few days, I have been more satched against than satching to paraphrase King Lear, a Geordie King Lear.

King Lear? King Lear? Lear? King Lear? a Geordie King Lear. King Lear, King Lear, King Lear, or Coadelia. Does that, does that love us Coadelia? Is that right? Is that? You, you, yeah, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. But I was doing his name, like the laugh from Biker Grove. Lear, Lear, Lear.

Nice. Because it seemed, actually we haven't gotten, we don't know what the weather's like in the August ones, but this ghost seemed intrinsically linked to the rain when Unsworth was reporting on it. Yes. Yeah. We do associate ghosts with bad weather. And I got absolutely satch the other day, so it's very topical.

Did you? Yeah, it's really rainy. Well, I would have got satch during the recording if we had been outdoors, but that'd be a terrible location for recording. That would have been. Well, I'm going to say, because I was very, very generous with the first two categories. I'm inclined to be strict. He was a very wet ghost, very damp, but was he absolutely such?

We don't know. He did have a Mac on potentially. He may have been wearing a Mac, but we don't know that he was absolutely satched because we don't know that it was raining in all of the encounters. It didn't have a hat on. Well, that suggests he wasn't expecting rain. Yeah, that's true. Oh, I know.

Well, yeah, maybe he was, should have gone with like gray because he was gray and the weather was gray because it was raining. So maybe I should have done that, but it's too late now. And consequently, I'm afraid it's a three for absolutely satch because the man, as far as we can tell, was partially satched. Fair enough. Okay. I need to look up a word though for this next category.

Fool me quadrice. Quince. Fool me Quadrice. For quince. Fool me quince. Quince? Which is... Quince? Yeah, for five. For five. But quince is a type, that's somewhat to do, it's a fruit, isn't it, or something?

Yeah, quince is a fruit, yeah. Fool me quince. I see. Okay. That's just, that's, I was expecting you to finish the saying, but that's it. Quince is like the four times version of. Quadrice is the four times version of, of once, twice thrice quadrice. And then I've made up that quince because Quinn is usually for five, isn't it?

Oh, I see. Yes. Yeah. Fool me quince. And I'm trying to, I'm trying to push it for five points because it happened, I think five times he was fooled by this gray hitchhiker. The gray hitcher. Yeah, it's, yeah, I mean, yeah. I'm quite annoyed by this one because I think you've caught me in a vice, James.

How can I not give you five for the category fool me quins? The only drawback being that you just invented that word for the purpose of getting five points. Yeah. And maybe that's the fifth trick. What, that the devil pulled? The devil pulled was claiming that quince was a word that meant five times of a thing. It's not as famous as the other phrase.

No, it's not as famous. I don't think I can get out of this. I want to wriggle out of this, but I can't think of a way. I will, to be fair, double check. He picks him up the first time when he's wet, picks him up the second time a couple of days later, picks him up a month again, picks him up a fourth time. Yeah. So once, once, a couple of days later, a month later, some months later,

so that's four. And that's the time when he waits for him, then drives off, then sees him. And then on the quints, he doesn't stop. Okay. Yes. To pick him up. Because it would be shame on him. Cause that would have been shame on him to fool me quints.

Four times shame on you. Fool me quints. Shame on me. Yes. Yeah. Great saying. Applicable to so many situations. It's clear as crystal. It's five out of five. Yes. Yeah, great saying. Applicable to so many situations. As clear as crystal.

It's five out of five. Yes. Chilling, chilling, James. Chilling. Spine chilled. Timbers shivered. We have another great story in front. Ghosts over Britain.

Alistair, if people want to see us record one of these live, what are they going to do? Spilling, spine chilled, timbers shivered. Another great story from ghosts over Britain. Alistair, if people want to see us record one of these live, what do they just look in the notes? Several opportunities, Manchester. Yes, London. We'll put some links in the below. And if you want to just hear more stuff, then go to patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod,

where you can join the law folk and you'll get bonus episodes, ad free feed and access to the law folk community discord. And thank you very much to Geoff for editing this and thank you for listening and remember fool me quints. ["The Law folk music"] Have you ever hitchhiked by the way? Have you ever hitchhiked? No, no, I've never, I've never hitchhiked.

I've hitched a hook once. Have you? When I ran out of petrol. Is this the time when you annoyed a taxi driver? No, that was a different time.