The event:

The phantom hitchhiker

The location:

Nunney, Sommerset - August 1975

The legend:

A driver gave a lift to a middle-aged hitchhiker who sat in the back of the car and bgan to complain that he was cold. He then mysteriously vanished while the car was still in motion.

It caused such a panic in Nunney that people were afraid that attendance at their Silver Jubilee celebrations would be affected, and a posse of vigilantes began hunting the lane in search of the ghost. The chairman admitted this was merely a publicity stunt.

But then a retired lorry-driver recalled that some of his friends in the 1940s reported seeing a ghost at this spot; they thought it was the dying curse of a cyclist knocked down by a car.