What happened
On 19 November 1965 a tragic crash occurred on the A229 on Blue Bell Hill: a car carrying four young women home from a hen night collided with an oncoming Jaguar. Three of them died, including the bride-to-be, who was due to marry the next day. Soon stories began to circulate of a girl, often in a white dress, who asks for a lift to Chatham or Maidstone on the hill and vanishes from the car before reaching her destination. Other drivers reported a woman suddenly running out in front of them – they stopped in shock, but there was no one on the road. The local press collected such accounts for decades; some were even reported to the police, who found neither a victim nor any trace.
Witnesses
Kent motorists whose accounts were published by the “Kent Messenger,” among others; some spoke on the record, but no account has been confirmed.
Explanations and hypotheses
Blue Bell Hill is a textbook English version of the vanishing hitchhiker legend, studied among others by Michael Goss in “The Evidence for Phantom Hitch-hikers” (1984). Interestingly, according to the local press, similar stories about the hill circulated even before the 1965 crash, which was only later “written in” as their origin. Psychologists point to driver fatigue, night driving and the power of expectation on such a well-known route. It is worth remembering that the victims of the 1965 crash were real people – on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy the local press recalled their story with due respect.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- Michael Goss, The Evidence for Phantom Hitch-Hikers (Aquarian Press, 1984)
- Folklore – recenzja: Michael Goss, The Evidence for Phantom Hitch-Hikers (1988)
More: Wikipedia (en)