Phantom car brings crash fear to isle
Written by Graham Williams
Source of newspaper not known, date thought to be about 1971
Story copied from Catherine Macdougall's entry on Mysterious Hebrides - tales of the unexplained
A phantom car has appeared on Benbecula. And the people of the Hebridean island are convinced that it foreshadows a disaster. The car, a dark blue 1100, has been seen twice in the past fortnight, it is claimed. The apparition has made motorists draw off the road to let it pass, and then it has vanished completely.
On each occasion, the car has appeared at a bend on the coast road not far from Nunton House, once the headquarters of the Clan Ranald, where Flora Macdonald received part of her schooling.
It was first sighted by 19-year-old garage mechanic James MacLennan of Hacklet, Benbecula. He was driving south at lunchtime when at a distance of about 200 yards, he saw the dark blue car approaching in a hollow of the road ahead.
He drew into a lay-by and waited for the car to appear over the brow of a little hill. But it never did.
“I drove forward slowly, thinking that it must have stopped waiting for me, he told me. “But there was no car. Nor are there any roads it could have turned into at that spot. It left me completely baffled.
“Thinking back, I can’t recall seeing the driver in it”.
Last week, the ghost car appeared again. Mr Angus Matheson, 65, who works at the sports centre in the Army camp at Balivanich was driving to work with Neil MacDonald, 21, whose father is postmaster at Griminish. At precisely 8.20 on that a clear morning, they approached the same hollow in a Morris van and saw the car coming towards them. They moved into a lay-by and waited. But once again the car never appeared.
Mr Matheson told me: “It was about 200 yards away when we saw it, but neither of us was aware of noticing a driver in it. One just didn’t think about that at the time. Of course, if it had happened in the evening, cynics would say that we had just had a dram or two. But what we saw, we saw, and that was that.
Said Neil MacDonald who also works at the army base: “The care was coming at a terrific speed, and then it was just no more. There was absolutely no way it could have left the main road there.
A tragedy
“There have been one or two accidents near that spot over the years, but none was serious. Those who know about these things on the island say that it means there will be a gragedy there in the future.”
Island folklore expert Mr Donald MacEachen, a crofter and probation officer, who is at present a patient in Glasgow Western Infirmary, told me:
“Townspeople laugh at these things because with all the noise and din they face, they rarely come across examples of the supernatural. But on ani island it is quite different. There is peace there and many of the Benbecula and Uist people have the old Norse power of vision. Everything that has happened on these islands, like the Army base and the rocket range, was predicted by islanders long ago. This is a vision of a crash to come, and it is so strong that it means that someone, or more than one, will be killed. I fully expect that others will see this phantom car and some may even be able to detect who is driving it. But if this is the case they will never reveal the name. There is nothing anyone can do to stop it happening”.