Hello, it's Richard McClain Smith here. Season 7 of Unexplained will begin on Friday, July 28.

In the meantime, we are revisiting some of our favourite episodes. This week it's the turn of a

very mundane and unassuming stretch of road to get its place in the spotlight once more.

The Stocksbridge bypass was opened in May 1988, since then it has earned a reputation as one of

Britain's most haunted roads. This is why. This is Unexplained Season 2 Episode 5,

Roads to nowhere.

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 push 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

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