In the past few years, the bypass of Stocksbridge has been dubbed the ‘Killer road’, due to the many accidents that have been caused there. Bad driving and speeding caused many deaths on that road.
However, these accidents aren’t what made this road famous. In 1989, the road was completed on the North side of the valley. It went through the centre of Stocksbridge, Deepcar and continued down through Wharncliffe Side and Oughtibridge.
The road, which opened on Friday the 13th, gained its fame, when Michael Aspen did a show on its supposed haunting. Various satellite channels soon followed.
The creepy story about these haunting comes from the very early days of the road, in fact the road was been built when these sinister events started to happen.
A group of security guards observed a group of young children playing late at night below Pearoyd Bridge. They noticed that the young children seemed to be wearing clothes from a different era; the clothes seemed to look old. After walking over to the spot where they had noticed the children playing, they saw that the mud had no footprints on it. In the morning, they asked some of the workers that lived in caravans and found that they also could hear children singing and playing late at night.
The following night, the two security guards went back to their round and saw a figure that looked like a monk. When they drove towards the spot where they saw him, the monk had vanished. This spooked the security guards so much they called the police, who didn’t believe them and told them they needed a priest instead of the police. They took the policeman’s word slightly too literally and ended up banging on the church’s door so loudly, and they were so uncontrollable that the vicar in turn called the police.
Due to these events, two policemen were sent to investigate the road. They parked their car so that they could see the bridge, where the security guards had seen the monk. At first they thought they had seen something move, but found that it was only a tarpaulin blowing. Then they felt it go cold all of a sudden. Then they both saw a body- torso only in the window. It then vanished. They tried to start the car but it didn’t start at first. They then drove up to the construction site, parked up and informed their station of their whereabouts. Then a loud crash was felt in the car, no-one was around. This caused the two policemen to drive off in a hurry.
The legend goes that the Monk became disappointed with the harsh way of life at a nearby monastery, and had left and found work as a gardener at Underbank Hall. There he had lived the rest of his natural life, but because he had left the monastery the monk was buried in unhallowed ground on a nearby hillside. A hillside that is now cut through by the A616 Stocksbridge Bypass. According to the legend, his spirit is at unrest due to his grave being disturbed. The children are said to have either fallen down a shaft or that they were buried alive during mining accidents, or killed when a cart carrying youngsters home from a day out overturned.
However, in recent years, the road has seen less and less accidents due to a slight redesign with better signage coupled with specs cameras (these measure your average speed over a set distance - no point braking just for them!) stopped the fatalities. These accidents have gone down by 82 %.
Either way, you won’t be finding me on that road anytime soon, so if you do go through that road be careful!
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