Welcome to Unexplained Extra, with me, Richard McClean Smith.

For the weeks in between episodes, we look at the stories and ideas that, for one reason

or other, didn't make it into the show.

In the last episode, roads to nowhere, we found ourselves circling a small, concrete patch

of England on the southern boundary of Yorkshire, known as the Stocksbridge Bipars.

This seemingly unassuming stretch of road is considered by some to be the most haunted

in all of the UK.

Often, when we describe something as haunted, what we are actually referring to is the

suggestion of presence.

The idea that something, beyond our usual modes of perception, has become attached to

ourselves or a place.

Occasionally, we might consider this something to possess an agency of malicious intent towards

us.

More frequently, however, claimed sightings like those seen near the Stocksbridge Bipars

are benign, appearing more like visual echoes of the past that play out in front of us

before fading from view.

In this sense, we might consider such an occurrence, not as a random event, but rather, as a

continual re-emergence of the past, kept alive and sustained by those who claim to bear

witness to it.

In some ways, it is irrelevant as to whether those sightings exist in their own right,

whether they are images somehow projected from our subconscious and psychically brought

to life, or whether they are pure fictions of the mind.

...