The Lady Vanishes

The back road to Rhyl from Prestatyn and Dyserth is known locally as "the old Rhyl road" and travelling along this two mile stretch of winding and curving road night or day, can be quite daunting.  Over the years, the area where this road is located seems to have been the scene of the presence of a mysterious figure of an old woman, sighted walking along this stretch of road.

 In the mid 1960's, on a wet and windy night around 1am, Paddy Hughes and her driving companion, were travelling along the old Rhyl road, when they drove past a woman on her own in the pouring rain.  Paddy said to her friend" why don't we stop and pick that lady up we have just passed, she must be soaking wet and what on earth is she doing out on her own at this time of night?".  Paddy's friend, for some reason, had not seen the woman, but reversed the car to ask her did she want a lift.

When they approached the spot where she should have been, she was nowhere to be seen and with the high hedges on either side of the road, it was highly unlikely that she had gone over them.  They drove on to their destination both puzzled and mystified for the rest of the evening as to where the woman had disappeared to.

Paddy didn't think any more about her strange late night occurrence until she met her future husband Stan.  One evening together the conversation they were having changed to ghost stories and Paddy's encounter on the old Rhyl road, they then realised that they had both experienced seeing the identical woman on the old Rhyl road, but eight years apart.  The main difference in their sightings,  was that Stan knew the old woman by sight and that she was still alive and had seen her since his sighting of her, but, had never mentioned it to her as he only knew her by sight and didn't want to frighten her by saying that he had seen her apparition.

Stan's sighting of this woman took place as he was driving on the old Rhyl road on his journey to Rhyl.  It was raining at the time and Stan noticed by the side of the road an old lady in a white raincoat.  He stopped the car a little further up the road to ask if she wanted a lift, but when he looked back to look for her, she was nowhere to be seen.  Stan remembered that she didn't look at all wet although the rain had been coming down quite heavily for quite some time.

Another later sighting of this mysterious old woman, took place when four men in a car on their journey home along the old Rhyl road after a late night shift at Point of Ayr Colliery, suddenly noticed from nowhere, a woman walk out into the road directly in front of their car and was "run over".  They felt the wheels of the car bump over her but when they stopped, expecting the worse, they found the road empty - there was no trace of the woman to be seen.

Extracts from Harry Thomas "A haunted tour"

A collection of Harry's Pictures and Stories from the rhyl, prestatyn & district " A haunted tour"