New sightings on the old lonely road – The comprehensive list grows!

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The Paranormal Chronicles have received new reports of strange occurrences and anomalies on the quiet stretch of Pembrokeshire road linking Merlin’s Bridge with Haverfordwest.

Chronicled by G L Davies

Clay lanes is a small road that is often used to avoid the build-up of traffic that brings Haverfordwest to a near halt and apart from a small riverside hamlet has little but fields, hedges and an old ruin.

It was in November 2014 that the Paranormal Chronicles published a comprehensive report, citing the many strange occurrences seen on the road that the national media then proclaimed to be the most haunted road in Wales. Many quickly contacted us to recant their own chilling experiences while others baulked at the notion as nothing more than nonsense and rampant imaginations. Many Paranormal enthusiasts now drive that lonely road in hopes of experiencing their own paranormal activity.

On September 14th 2018 at approximately 10 pm, two people in a car reported witnessing a very odd anomaly and subsequently sent in both their own interpretations of the strange event. At this time they wish to remain anonymous until further exploration of the event can be conducted.

Statement 1: At 10 pm I and a friend who saw it as well were driving down clay lane from merlins bridge side. Not far along the road, we saw a big bright white light probably the size of a beach ball about 30ft in front of the car. It was on the left side of the road on a right-hand bend and just disappeared into the hedge. There was no glare as if it was a torch etc, it was just a ball of light. There was no opening in the hedge for a person to have stood in either. When we got home we checked the dashcam footage and it hadn’t recorded. It was far too bright not to be picked up on a camera normally.

We slowed down where we saw it and there was nothing. It was barely past st marks school. We were Just at the beginning of clay lane really when it gets completely dark after the houses merlins bridge side. We even turned around at the little right-hand turn lane a little further on to keep trying to find an explanation but the was nothing. The light didn’t correlate with coming anywhere but the road. My friend and I both vape so have the windows open. there was no sound whatsoever. I shut the windows and locked the doors quickly after that!!

The light that we saw wasn’t in the sky it was person head height if that makes sense. When we watched the video back, you hear me saying what was that? Then my friend said I don’t know. We see in the video that he slows right down at the exact point we saw it and there was nothing. It recorded the car drive buy not the light itself but as I mentioned it was far too bright not to have been picked up.  All I had was a really bad headache afterwards but to be honest, I was in shock seeing that and It’s hard to know if I brought it on myself from getting worked up?

Statement 2: This was around 10.15 pm tonight, September 14th I put my lights on the main beam we got around the first corner ( From Merlins Bridge side to Haverfordwest) and there was a floating ball of light about the size of a football on the passenger side of the road about 10 feet in front of us it was clear as day, we both noticed it, thinking it was a torch or something I slowed down and the light went sideways left in to the hedge, it was a full hedge no gaps so it couldn’t have been a person, I’m still in shock.

We turned around and headed back and did the route again and saw nothing, we went back to my house and looked at your website and seeing the two reports of a white light in the exact same location we were shaking and had goosebumps, I have a dash cam and looked at the footage but whatever it was has not shown up on my recording. I don’t know what this is but being a bit sceptical I am excited!

The Paranormal chronicles have an ongoing investigation into the road with wildlife cams, night vision and recording devices and general surveillance conducted regularly. Though we have nothing to cement the claim that the light anomaly was seen we do know that no agricultural work was being undertaken at the time. We are asking for anyone who may have seen something to please contact us so we can attempt to determine the validity of the light, its path, duration of brightness and hopefully its origin.

Clay lane has many strange paranormal characters and events which do warrant an uneasy feeling when travelling alone especially at night.

Similarly to the above reports, three carloads of merrymakers from a New Year’s Day party in 2013 claim at separate intervals between 10 pm and 1 am say they saw “Massive white lights” floating and disappearing in the field leading up the hill towards the sharp right-hand bend. When quizzed they said that it was “…definitely not Chinese lanterns and certainly not agricultural related like a tractor due to the size and height the white lights reached.”

One of the drivers stopped to take a picture but said the lights vanished and he ended up with just a picture of the night with no evidence captured. They waited and the lights did not reappear and he called the people whose party they had attended and asked if they could see anything from their house which is situated at Poets Corner, the homes that overlook Freemen’s way and the Clay lane.

They did not see anything. It was only a few weeks later that all three of the car’s occupants were at a social occasion together that it emerged that each one had seen the same lights but at different times. In June and October, 2014 reports of large floating white lights seen at the exact location have come to our attention. No picture of the alleged lights have been produced for examination at this time

Two accounts have reached us of people claiming that they have seen a ghostly white shape on the bridge that hangs above Freemens way. One couple who were walking their dog one night claim they thought they saw what they believed to be a woman in a white outfit walking toward them on the bridge that then simply vanished about ten feet in front of them while one man claims he saw while driving, a young woman emerge from the wall by the bridge and “….simply disappear into thin air.”

The Clay lane Phantom Hitchhiker has been chronicled on this website before and in depth and is the account of a Taxi driver in the early 1980’s. This is perhaps the second most famous ghost in the area after the Haverfordwest Monk and is most likely attributed to the Lost Hitchhiker urban myth that populates most towns in the world.

A local taxi driver had a call for a pickup in Haverfordwest just after midnight on New Years Day 1982. Being based in Merlin’s bridge with his then trademark Black London cab he set off down clay lanes. There he saw standing, by a gate to a field, a young woman. Now being the middle of a Pembrokeshire winter, cold, wind and rain fully entrenched the taxi driver could not but notice the fact that this woman was stood alone and totally unprepared for the cold and dreary conditions.

As he neared he saw that she was wearing a pair of shorts, a vest top, hiking boots, a rucksack and her long dark hair matted to her face. He opened his window and asked through the wind and rain if that she wanted a lift into town. She nodded and clambered into the back of his cab. He turned and looked at her sitting in his back seat drenched and miserable.

Finally, as he drew into Haverfordwest where the road continues up to Augustine way or leads down union hill towards Quay Street, he slowed down the cab to ask her where she would like to go, where would she like to get out. To his shock and dismay, he saw that she had vanished. No girl, no rucksack, not even a drop of rain on the seat or a muddy boot print.

Inexplicably she had vanished. It had been mere seconds from the time he had last caught a glance of her in the rear view mirror and he did not hear the heavy black door open and close for her to run off into the darkness. In our estimation, one of the most popular ghostly sightings from across the world is the Phantom Hitch-hiker.

It has become interwoven into the urban myths and legends of pretty much every town in the western hemisphere and easy to dismiss but then we received another current report on the Clay lane. The witness who wishes to remain anonymous due to their vocation had this experience to report: “I was passing the entrance to the ruins. I glanced in the rearview mirror and a shape caught my eye. I slowed down and looked directly behind me, and at the very back of the minibus, sat down in one of the seats, was a shadow. It looked like a woman. As I am looking back at this, the shadow gets up, and vanishes” Could it be the same metaphysical passenger or is this of someone else? We advise that you check the back seat while you’re driving this stretch of road…or perhaps not if you don’t want to see anything shadowy and ghostly sat quietly there.

As you travel down clay lanes you will come across the ruins of the 13th Century mansion of Haroldston, said to be the birthplace of Sir John Perrot (of Carew castle), the illegitimate son of Henry VIII. The site is a complex of ruined late medieval and Tudor buildings and formal garden areas. The dominant building element is an L-shaped ruinous tower. The Ruins have been well documented by the Paranormal Chronicles (see archives) with sightings of a white or grey Lady, strange shapeless indiscernible shapes and a medium claiming that the body of a young lady is hidden near the hedge by the road and it is her spirit that brings a tragic darkness to the area.

It is the stretch of road by the footpath entrance to the ruins that is said to cause the most alarm. Over a dozen witness accounts have described an overpowering dread while walking the road late at night. They have experienced a sense that the night is enclosing in on them, that it becomes unnaturally cold and some claim that they have heard their names called from the blackness.

A dread or a depression is said to engulf the body and it is like all sense of hope and love is vanquished. One Witness, a former soldier, said that he left Merlin’s bridge in the early hours after “A sesh” at his friends and admitted he was “Not in the best shape to be walking home” but halfway down Clay lanes he could have sworn that he heard his name being called by someone up ahead and that he lost his night vision and stumbled to the ground and felt like the night was enclosing on him. He said he sobered up pretty quickly and ran home but said that the experience was one of the most “terrifying” he has ever experienced as he felt that something down there “was toying with him.”

One gentleman said that while driving this particular stretch of road one evening that he saw a hooded brown figure stood by the telegraph pole. It was not so much the figure that spooked him but the feeling of dread and despair that enveloped him. He drove home at speed and only drives that stretch of road at night when absolutely necessary. This is a common complaint.

The Paranormal Chronicles received a message from a family claiming while holidaying in the county during the weekend of the 23rd May 2015 that they witnessed an unusual and chilling experience. Mr Taylor from Sussex contacted us after researching his sighting and saw that we had covered the road in depth with several articles.

“We have visited Pembrokeshire many times over the years. Pembrokeshire is one of our favourite destinations and we have family in Saundersfoot whom we stay with. I am very familiar with the area but I had not visited the Haverfordwest castle. My wife and two daughters enjoyed our trip to Haverfordwest very much and we took the road (Clay lane) out of Haverfordwest to get to the Pembroke Road to continue our trip. It was not late at all, maybe 8 p.m. It was on the road that we travelled up a steep hill and down onto a country road. On our right was a field with what appeared to be a ruined church which upon research was an old house (Haroldston house). I was tempted to get out and grab a picture of the ruin when my Wife shouted to slow down and on the road was the figure of a person.

I stopped and my wife and two children watched a blurry figure walk from the middle of the road and disappear into a gap in the hedge (left to the right). The figure was very tall and was definitely in front of us. There were no discernible features just the blurry outline of a very tall figure (Over 6 foot maybe taller). You could see the arms swinging as it walked. It was not dirt on the windscreen or shadows cast by the trees or an ordinary person just crossing the road.

There was an actual shadowy object crossing the road. It was very unsettling and my children particularly the youngest was very upset by the sighting. I am not one for the paranormal but to see something like this in the daylight with my family has obviously opened my mind to such things. I am ashamed to admit that I did not get out of the car to see where it had gone and the incident happened so quickly that I did not get a photograph. The children were upset so we drove off. I spoke to my relatives and they were not aware of any hauntings in Haverfordwest and it was not until we returned home that I read your articles. I found the episode to be quite frightening and would like to inform you that I am of sound mine as I send my sighting to you and not one to dupe you or your investigators”

A few meters up from that distinct part of the road is responsible for one young gentleman having a terrifying experience in the early hours of November 3rd 2014. He had picked the new Call of Duty from Game in Haverfordwest as part of their midnight launch. He decided the quickest route home would be the Clay Lanes to his home in Merlins Bridge. He said it was raining and blustery.

He got to the section of Road and just ahead of him he thought he saw someone walking towards him. He didn’t like the idea very much as it was approx 12.40am on a Monday morning and was concerned that he was going to be mugged for his wallet or for his game. As the figure got closer he realized that it was just the outline of someone and that he could “see right through it.” He said you could almost see the rain hitting it as if it had an outline and the strange transparent figure simply walked through him, gave him a deep icy chill and left him breathless. The man ran and did not stop until he got home. He told his friends who suggested that it was perhaps the Predator but he is adamant that what he saw was very real and very terrifying.

Another young man using Clay lanes one night to go jogging said that while running he thought he heard an animal running next to him in the hedge. He said that such things did not normally concern him but as he ran he realized that this animal was not only quite large due to the noise it was making but also it was very near him and deliberately keeping up the pace with him. The gentleman decided to sprint the last stretch and up to the comforting light of Merlins Bridge and when he reached St marks school and looked behind him he saw peering back at him from the darkness a pair of large golden eyes. The eyes blinked and vanished. Was this just a curious indigenous creature or had the man’s jogging in the night disturbed a very strange entity?

A retired policeman reported that on the night of Sunday 8th July 2018 that while driving the road a tall flame, perhaps 6feet based on his estimation travelled in an adjacent field as if it were trying to keep up with his car, the event only lasted a few seconds and left him baffled. He pulled over at a convenient area and was witness to no such activity saying there was no sound or smell to solidity something large had been on fire. Along with the driver we examined the field he claimed to have seen the fire but no burn marks or traces were seen in the area he believed he had witnessed the very large tall flame.

So, what did our recent witnessed see on the night of September 14th? Clay lane has too much peculiarity to dismiss as simple imaginations. People of all ages and backgrounds are witnessing strange events. Could it be that there is a rational suggestion, a gas or chemical is seeping out on the road, causing all manner of people to hallucinate or subconsciously are we as a community looking to fuel the mythology of that road with eager and suggestive minds? Many of you reading this have no doubt travelled that road thousands of times and witnessed nothing out of the ordinary while dozens of people regularly experience something very worrying and often terrifying.

I, G L Davies, ask that as opposed to accepting the possibility of a haunted road or simply shaking it off as nonsense that as a collective, a county of sceptics, enthusiasts and on the fencers, take the time to travel that road, armed with dashcams, camera phones and all manner of recording devices and see just what is going on down there. Regardless of your belief in such things you may get the answer we are all looking for, maybe just not the one you expect.

Contact myself G L Davies if you have further information by emailing paranormalchronicles@aol.com and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

Thank you for all your ongoing support, theories and account. Please support our social media outlets as we are an evergrowing community. I will have a new book out based on a very prolific haunting in Haverfordwest on 30.11.18 and will be having a very special giveaway coming up, so don’t miss out.

Together we explore the Unknown.