I have heard a lot of ghost stories, but the apparition that has been spooking the motorists on the A22 at the Caterham Bypass near Croydon, in the UK, is about as strange as they come.

 

The ghoulish figure is seen by drivers in the early hours of the day, walking or running across the highway in front of oncoming cars. She is clearly female, wearing ripped tights and a mini-skirt. What is scary is that the person has no features on her face. The face is blank.

 

The apparition has been reported to local police in that same area by drivers since about 1962, authorities say. One recent sighting sparked an intense police search, complete with dogs and helicopter, because the driver was certain a woman was in distress and possibly wandering lost in a nearby wood.

 

They said the dogs failed to find a scent and the helicopter personnel found nothing moving in the area. Whatever the drivers saw, it apparently was not a living human.

 

“It is all very eerie,” one police officer said.

 

One recent sighting was shared by three men riding together at 2:30 a.m. on April 13. The driver, a 36-year-old man, said they all saw what appeared to be a young girl running across the road in front of the vehicle.

 

“We called the police and they said somebody else also had reported it,” he said.

 

He described the girl as wearing black boots, a dark top and a beige skirt. Thinking the girl might be in some kind of trouble at that strange hour of the day, in such a deserted area, he said they turned around at the first overpass and went back.

 

He said the girl was still there. “She was just walking across the road. All three of us saw her.”

 

That was when they looked at her more closely and saw that she had no features on her face. “It made the hairs stand out on the top of my neck,” he said. “It really freaked us out.”

 

He said he is now sure the figure was some kind of ghost.