Ghost Road
The legend is real.
Let me tell you a ghost story. Not just a fun tale for upcoming Halloween. But a true apparition that I have witnessed myself. Let me start off by telling you that I believe in ghosts. I have some extra sensory abilities. I am not here to prove that or disprove it but I am going to let you know that my beliefs probably don’t help with my objectivity. But I am now almost sixty and my beliefs have matured from years of reading, research and introspection. This story goes back to my teens. The years when you aren’t looking too deep at anything but your friends and where the latest party is. Oh and pot. Alot of dope. Nothing serious, but we smoked alot of hash oil at that time (early 1980’s) which made us mellow and high. But high, not drunk, not hallucinating, not spinning out of control. Just a mellow, happy glow that put a spin on an evening but didn’t render us incoherent. So that is the setting, many moons ago.
“Ghost road”, as it is called, is located in Scugog, Port Perry, Ontario. You can look up the directions online, but it is literally that, an old farm road. The legend is that a young man was chased by an angry father of his girlfriend who followed him until a crash. Stories vary but the end result was he supposedly hit a rock or a fence where he was decapitated. The angry father was said to have buried him in the field and the ghost of this bike rider remains to this day, endlessly riding the road, playing out his last ride. Possibly in search of his head? This was supposed to have occurred either in the late 1950’s or 1960’s. I am not sure if there is concrete evidence of this young man or his disappearance or not. I have never bothered to look into it. I know what I saw.
The story is that if you sit there long enough you will either see a light coming down the road, hear the sound of motorcycle, or feel the heat on the rock he supposedly hit. I have never touched the rock, but I have seen the ghost and heard his bike.
Picture yourself, a teen who is amongst friends who can drive. Friday night, nothing to do.
You aren’t old enough to drink or get in a bar so your options are limited. Besides, you will definitely be smoking some pot (although then it was hash oil) which at that time was illegal and you definitely weren’t doing this in public. So what was an option? Drive up to Ghost Road. We lived in Oshawa. It was forty five minutes to get there at least. A good pass of time to get yourself revved up for a ghost. Then you had to find it. Then you had to pull over and sit and wait. There was often others there. You spaced out your cars. Not alot, maybe two or three cars. Then you sat, quietly.
I’ll admit even now that I can remember the fear. Not necessarily of the ghost, but the location. The road was completely dark. The blackness enveloped you and on each side of the road was cornfields or trees, I can’t remember which. You’d feel a little less alone because occasionally another’s car lights would come on. But it was spooky. You thought about murderers or other unnatural events. Your vulnerability was clear. No one knew where you were, and they certainly wouldn’t be looking here for you. We would pass around a joint but we joked and waited, each trying not to feel the fear. But it was there. I remember it. The night sounds of the country. Crickets. Rustling. And then the bike…
How many nights we sat there? I can’t tell you now. Enough for sure. But then one night it happened. We all sat in disbelief as we heard the rumble of a motorcycle in the distance.
And then came the single light, moving towards us, at the level you would expect a bike’s light to be. The sound of the bike became louder and the light came closer and then, it passed. I did not see a bike. I heard the sound and saw the light and then it passed. It whooshed by. And the rear red light as it disappeared.
Our amazement was complete. No one knew what to say. Of course we validated with each other what we had each seen. But, we were flabbergasted. We had gone there to seek the ghost. We had not counted on seeing him. It was a Friday night adventure. Nobody, for a minute thought we would actually see the ghost of this poor soul who rode the road. We really did not know what to do. We left. Fast. I don’t think anyone said a single word on that drive home.
I went there again a few times. That was my only experience seeing the ghost. People always tried to say it was reflection of a faraway road. You knew in the daylight from the lay of the fields, that was not possible. I didn’t need anyone to explain it. I heard the bike as clear as any bike that had ever passed me. I was not that high that I could write it off as my imagination. I know what I saw, I know what I heard. I don’t have any interest in what it could have been other than what I know I saw.
Ghost Road is real. You may never see it, if you go. But you may. I hope one day that poor soul gets to rest.
Jennifer.