Fright Bites: The Woman on the Path
Haunted UK Podcast: History, Hauntings and the Unexplained
Steven Holloway
4.5 • 652 Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2026
⏱️ 4 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A locked botanical garden.
A winter evening patrol.
An elderly woman walking slowly along the path… where no one should have been.
In this Fright Bites story from Haunted UK Podcast, Steve shares Connor Pilling’s unsettling account of an encounter that took place when he was thirteen years old. While helping his father, a security officer at a UK botanical garden, Connor joined the final sweep of the grounds after closing time — checking gates, paths, and clearings to make sure no visitors had been left behind.
Then their torchlight caught sight of an elderly woman ahead of them. She didn’t respond when they called out. She continued walking until she reached a bend in the path… and vanished.
What makes the account even more disturbing is what Connor learned later. His father and several colleagues had reportedly seen the same figure in the same grounds before. For Connor, the experience changed everything. The darkness he had never feared before suddenly felt occupied, uncertain, and alive with possibilities he could no longer dismiss.
Quiet, direct, and deeply unnerving, this short true paranormal story explores a repeated ghost sighting, childhood fear, haunted landscapes, and the moment a single encounter can permanently alter the way someone sees the world.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Fright Bites, a mini-series from the Haunted UK podcast. |
| 0:14.0 | Over the years, you've trusted us with your true paranormal experiences, stories that chilled us, unsettled us, and stayed with us |
| 0:23.0 | long after the episodes ended. In Frightbytes, we bring you the very best short-form listener |
| 0:29.7 | submissions we've ever received, hand-picked, stripped down, and told in their most terrifying |
| 0:35.9 | form. These are short stories, real accounts. |
| 0:40.7 | No filler, no distractions, just a single moment |
| 0:44.2 | where something unexplained stepped out of the shadows |
| 0:47.1 | and into someone's life. |
| 0:50.1 | So dim the lights, get comfortable and brace yourself. |
| 0:54.1 | This is Fright Bites, the woman on the path. |
| 1:06.0 | Approximately 14 years ago when I was 13, my father worked as a security officer at a botanical |
| 1:13.0 | garden in the UK. During the winter months, the park closed early, usually between four |
| 1:19.2 | and five in the afternoon, as darkness fell quickly. It was the school holidays, and on this |
| 1:25.7 | particular evening I had gone to work with him. |
| 1:28.3 | We carried out our usual routine, a full patrol of the grounds, locking all internal and external gates, |
| 1:35.3 | followed by a second sweep to make sure no members of the public had been accidentally locked inside. |
| 1:42.3 | As we were walking back towards the main gates, my torchbeam |
| 1:47.1 | caught something ahead of us on the path, an elderly woman. She was hunched over, walking slowly |
| 1:53.6 | in the opposite direction. We shouted out to her explaining that the gates were locked and that we |
| 1:59.2 | would open one to let her out. She didn't respond. |
| 2:03.9 | Assuming she might be hard of hearing, we quickened our pace to catch up. But as soon as she |
| 2:09.1 | reached a bend in the path and passed out of sight, she was gone. Completely gone. We searched the |
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