Tales of haunted roads and vanishing hitchhikers are among the more ubiquitous of ghost-story

tropes to be found throughout the world.

In a classic sense, the notion might bring to mind Washington Irving's headless horseman

from his gothic and satirical masterpiece, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

And although not a ghost in the regular sense, you'd be hard pushed to find a more iconic

incarnation of the mysterious roadside wanderer than the eponymous hitchhiker from HBO's

Dark and Trashy anthology series.

The prevalence of such stories has been clearly aided by the growth of the automobile industry

and the frequency with which people might as a result find themselves driving alone

through eerie nights on deserted roads, miles from familiar surroundings.

In other words, the perfect environment for a spectral encounter.

And it is this, the basic utility of the humble road or any other thoroughfare for that

matter, that for me makes it in many ways the most apt location for a haunting.

Not only is the path a metaphor with multiple applications, but also literally, it is

the pathway's basic function to deliver you from one place to another, a journey that

often involves traveling through the unfamiliar.

Places rarely experienced, only glimpsed in passing, and often at speed from inside the relative

comfort of a moving vehicle.

On the 15th of May 2009 in London, work began on a major transport project to construct

a high-speed rail link traveling east and west through the heart of the city.

In March 2013, construction workers, tunneling deep below the ground, found the remains

of 25 skeletons in a small 5-meter wide shaft.

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