Ghostly encounters have a way of sending chills down anyone’s spine, especially when darkness falls. Across the globe, numerous locations are renowned for their eerie histories and ghostly tales. Whether you’re a believer or a skeptic, there’s a dark underground tunnel in London that many claim is haunted by a phantom hitchhiker who hitches rides with unsuspecting drivers as they journey beneath the murky River Thames.
Now, let’s delve into the tunnel’s mystery. This story originates from a time before the route became the infamous traffic bottleneck it is today. According to folklore and urban legend enthusiasts, this ghostly hitchhiker has been haunting tunnel travelers since the early 1970s. Folklore podcaster Icy Sedgwick notes that the hitchhiker seemed to prefer motorcyclists over drivers. One biker recounted an experience where he was flagged down by a hitchhiker asking for a ride to Leigh-on-Sea in Essex.
The biker later claimed that when they exited the tunnel, his mysterious passenger had vanished. But the story doesn’t end there. Driven by curiosity, the biker decided to visit the address provided by the hitchhiker. When he arrived, a woman answered the door. What she revealed next terrified him: a young man had died in a motorcycle crash.
In his podcast, Sedgwick also references a letter describing a fatal motorcycle accident in 1960, which reportedly appeared in Fortean Times in 1994. According to the letter, a week after the accident, a strange sound echoed through the spot where the tragedy had occurred, exactly at 2 am.
Today, the tunnel’s ghostly hitchhiker has evolved into an urban legend. Adding to the tunnel’s dark history, a construction tragedy claimed the lives of seven workers out of the 800 who labored to build it.