It was on the evening of the 12th of October 1979 when a
26 year old man called Roy Fulton had been playing in a darts match in Leighton
Buzzard, Bedfordshire. When the match had finished, it was around 9.15 so Roy
got in his van, and it was around 9.20 when he was driving down Peddlars Lane
in Stanbridge. Only part of that lane had street lighting and when Roy entered
the dark part of the lane, he saw the figure of a young man, who was standing
on the left side of the road and was thumbing a lift. The young man had dark
hair and was wearing an open collar white shirt, with dark trousers. Roy was to
later say that the young man's face was rather pale and that his face was
elongated in appearance.
Roy stopped several feet ahead of the young man
hitchhiking so the hitchhiker walked up to Roy’s van and opened the passenger
door, the interior light came on and the man promptly sat in the passenger seat.
Roy asked him where he wanted to go and the young man just pointed ahead. Roy
assumed that he wanted to go to either Dunstable or Totternhoe, as both were in
that direction. So Roy drove off with his passenger. It was around 2 to 3
minutes later that Roy wanted a smoke so offered his silent passenger a
cigarette. As he turned to ask him, he saw that no one was in the van, Roy was
totally alone!
Roy slammed on the brakes and checked all around the van
to see if the young man had somehow, got into the back but no, he wasn’t to be
seen anywhere in the van. Roy came over with a cold panic but managed to grip
the steering wheel with sweaty hands and put his foot down and sped away.
Roy made his way to a nearby pub that he knew and one of
the barmen remarked to Roy that he looked as though “He’d seen a ghost”, to
which Roy replied that he had. He found himself telling the patrons at the bar
of what had just happened, even though he was still in shock. Once he had
calmed down enough, he went to the local police station to report the incident
there. The police were later to confirm that Roy hadn’t appeared as though he
were drunk, and Roy had admitted to drinking a couple of pints of beer whilst
he had been at the local darts match. He wanted the police to know what had
happened just in case the young man had been flesh and blood and had come to
any harm. The police sent a car to where the incident had happened but could
find no evidence of anyone coming to any harm, so they closed the case.
So just who had Roy picked
up that fateful night? There were no historical reports of a young man fitting
the description of the phantom hitchhiker, having an accident on that road so
it remains a mystery……
