M6 Motorway Ghosts: What the Reports Actually Say
In 2006 a road-building firm's Halloween survey named the M6 Britain's most haunted road. Its ghosts, from Roman figures near Lichfield to a white lorry near Knutsford, rest on a handful of anonymous reports. Here is what each source says.
In December 2005, according to the Paranormal Database, Sue Cowley was driving her husband and child home on the M6 Toll near Lichfield when she stopped for what she took to be animals crossing the road. They were shadowy figures in Roman dress, twenty or more of them, wading across the carriageway waist-deep in the tarmac. It is the best-known M6 ghost story, and it is close to a real Roman site. It is also one of only a few M6 reports that can be traced at all.
What the record actually shows
The M6’s reputation comes mostly from one press release. In October 2006 the construction firm Tarmac published a “Spooky Roads” survey timed for Halloween. A report dated 31 October 2006 says it put the M6 first. Tarmac’s sightings coordinator, Tony Simmons, said the M6 had more clear sightings reported than any other road in Britain, and that the list was ranked on the clarity of sightings rather than their number. The survey named “Roman Soldiers, phantom vehicles and the figure of a lone woman”. The same report quotes a survey finding that 45 per cent of drivers believe they have seen something they could not identify while driving. It gives no sample size or method, so the figure says little.
The Paranormal Database holds what appear to be the same accounts, with a little more detail. Near Knutsford in Cheshire a driver saw a glowing white lorry coming at him the wrong way. He pulled onto the hard shoulder and shut his eyes. When he looked in his mirror there was nothing there. On the M6 in Cumbria, south of the Lake District, a woman in old-fashioned clothes was seen on the hard shoulder around 10.30 one summer night, floating with no feet visible. Neither entry gives a name or a year.
A few older and odder reports sit alongside these. In January 1974 two Ipswich Town fans driving home from an away game said they saw a man dressed as a Puritan, in worn clothes and a wide-brimmed hat, in the toilets at Keele services. They followed him out and he was gone. In 1996 a car passenger crossing Shap, near junction 39, reported a semi-transparent rider in Cavalier dress beside the motorway. The writer Paul Devereux reported overtaking a driverless pickup truck near Birmingham that vanished once he was past. We found no phantom hitchhiker on the M6 in any source we checked.
The history behind the legend
The M6 has a claim to be Britain’s first motorway. Its Preston By-pass section, built by Tarmac Construction, was opened by Harold Macmillan on 5 December 1958. The full route was finished by 1971, and the last extension, linking it to the A74(M) near Gretna, opened in 2008.
The Roman story has real history beneath it. The M6 Toll opened in December 2003 and passes Wall, where it has a junction. Wall is the site of Letocetum, a Roman settlement near the meeting of Watling Street and Ryknild Street. The Romans arrived around 50 CE, the bath house that survives was built around 130 CE, and the place was abandoned in the fourth century. The National Trust owns the site and English Heritage holds it in guardianship. Two years after a new road opened beside a Roman town, a driver reported Romans crossing it. That may be coincidence or it may be suggestion. Either way, the location is real.
How to read it
The M6 carries huge volumes of traffic day and night over more than 230 miles. Tired drivers, fog, headlights and long dark stretches produce many strange glimpses on any road that size. A survey that invites the public to send in ghost stories will collect them, and a road this busy will supply the most. None of the M6 reports has been investigated, and most have no name or date. We class them as unverified road folklore. The Lichfield Roman sighting is the most specific, and the one most worth following up. If you were a witness, or know of a press report, we would like to hear from you.
Sources
- Hub-4, “Tarmac has found Britain’s spookiest road”, 31 October 2006 - the 2006 survey placing the M6 first, with Tony Simmons’s comments
- The Paranormal Database, Staffordshire (entries #7018 Lichfield and #7585 Keele) - Roman figures on the M6 Toll in December 2005, the Puritan at Keele in 1974
- The Paranormal Database, Cheshire (entry #7020 White HGV, Knutsford) - the phantom lorry
- The Paranormal Database, Cumbria (entries #7019 Floating Woman and #6528 Shap) - the hard shoulder woman and the Cavalier rider
- The Paranormal Database, West Midlands (entry #1106 Small Pickup Truck) - Paul Devereux’s phantom truck
- Wikipedia, M6 motorway - length and the 1958 Preston By-pass opening
- Wikipedia, M6 Toll - December 2003 opening and the junction at Wall
- Wikipedia, Letocetum - the Roman settlement at Wall