Why Do Ghosts Wear White?
[Original headline: So transparent]
Why do ghosts wear white? The latest survey into Britain’s most haunted roads is spooky for lots of reasons, not the least of which being that some people have actually been gainfully employed compiling such a list (scene in pub: bedraggled geek trying to chat up unimpressed lady: "What do I do? Well, I research ghosts on the A1 ... no wait, come back!").
But among the findings in the esteemed Fortean Times magazine is the key fact that white ladies seem to figure large in the findings.
So, um, why? Hopkirk, from the now legendary original Randall and Hopkirk (deceased) TV series, was a ghost, and wore a white suit, but that was because budgets were tight and special effects in those days meant the only clever option was to have no-one there at all, which in fact was what happened when anyone but Randall was around. So a white suit was the answer, presumably because a black one might have been a little scary for audiences.
Were all the ladies who shuffled off this mortal coil dressed in white at the time? Being knocked down while out for a walk dressed in dazzling white seems unlikely, not to mention unlucky. I can imagine ghosts, perhaps disturbed from whatever ghosts get up to by the building of roads, being inspired to wander around and have a look at the passing cars, but why would they be wearing white? Wasn’t that a bit impractical in the Middle Ages, what with the lack of washing machines and all?
A more likely theory is that the ghosts are those of boffins in their white coats who were run over while out investigating reports of ghosts on the roads: a close encounter would doubtless show little ghostly clipboards and geeky spectacles.
And the haunted highways include a lot more than pale ladies: the honour of the most haunted highway in the UK goes to the A23 between London and Brighton, where spectres are virtually elbow to elbow along the hard shoulder: they include a fella in a white trench coat and one dressed as a cricketer (the suspicion does arise that just possibly, in one or two cases, the motorists reporting the ghosts might actually have seen a real chap in a white trenchcoat - a lack of fashion sense is not confined to the undead - who had broken down. The poor lad might have been wondering why people driving past go ashen-faced and accelerate).
Elsewhere, there are loads of reports of ghostly cars, and hitch-hikers. The latter is fitting - surely if anyone is going to haunt a road it should be a hitcher (and possibly the odd highwayman, and maybe a traffic policeman or two). Indeed, more than a few hitchers have come to a nasty end while trudging along the side of the road - I hear of a poor fella in Italy who was standing with his little cardboard sign patiently waiting for a lift, and was struck and killed by a pineapple hurled from a passing car. Cause to make anyone mad enough to come back and haunt the laybys.
But ghost cars? I mean, REALLY? Since when did people get ghostly possessions? Clothes, well, that’s fair enough - naked ghosts everywhere would be a bit much. Horses are more acceptable - headless horsemen would be a bit laughable if they were on foot, or perhaps on a bike or even a Spacehopper (actually, the Spacehopper wouldn’t work - they’re hard enough to control with both hands, let alone having to spare one to keep your head on). But a car?
Who gets to take one with them? Is there a ghost pecking order? The low-ranking ones get a white jacket, the VIPs get a motor? And are the cars also white? The reports of the survey weren’t overly clear on the matter, but we have to assume not: a white car with white upholstery and white trim would have us expecting to see a pimp behind the wheel, rather than any serious, self-respecting ghost.
Or is it the car that’s the ghost? If - as reports indicate - some don’t have drivers, surely it must be. But what possible end could make a car come back as a ghost?
And does that mean we get ghost bikes, and boats and houses and things? There’s the Flying Dutchman, of course, but somehow a ghost ship seems more fitting and proper. Life would become a little unsettling if there were ghost toasters and pot plants.
There were tales, when I was myself a callow hitchhiking youth, of a ghost car in the Western Isles, of some ancient vintage, driven by a little old ghost man. A few fellas I met did say they saw it with their own eyes, howling along a deserted road at dusk, but none claimed to have been given a lift, exactly. Is such a thing possible? You often hear ghost stories of drivers picking up pale, somewhat uncommunicative ladies dressed in white at the dead of night, driving some way then turning round and seeing there’s no-one in the car at all, but can you get the opposite? Can you get in a ghost car? Or would you just foolishly fall to the road and hear phantom laughter fading into the distance.
If you could get a ride, that would be just the very thing - no pollution, no need for road tax, a car that was perfect for the planet. We’d all have them. Perhaps the global multinationals who control the car market know this to be possible and suppress the technology?
And how do we know what we see is actually a ghost? Are they transparent, always? How does a ghost car differ from a real one? There’s sadly far too many flesh-and-blood drivers who swerve all over the roads in the dead of night, howling and moaning, but that can be attributed to a combination of stupidity and alcohol rather than being dead. Though a great many driving in such a state will, it’s true, soon become dead.
Sadly, there seems to be one serious omission in all reported sightings - you’d think regular encounters would be had with little white flat hedgehogs, standing, forlorn, at the edge of the carriageways.
Or white ephemeral chickens, mown down in their eternal quest to cross the road.
• Story originally published by:
The Scotsman / Edinburgh | David Gray - Nov 19.01
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