Blue Bell Hill (A229 Road)

Its ghost story is of the vanishing-hitchhiker kind: a young woman in white who is given a lift near the Lower Bell and disappears from the car, or who steps in front of a car and vanishes under the wheels. The story is usually tied to the crash of 19 November 1965, in which Susan Browne, due to marry the next day, and her friends Judith Lingham and Patricia Ferguson died. Local press reports also date one vanishing passenger to 1962, before the crash, and the BBC's own versions disagree on which of the women the ghost is meant to be. Witnesses with names include Bob Vandepeer, James Skene, Maurice Goodenough and Ian Sharpe.

Blue Bell Hill is the stretch of the A229 that climbs the scarp of the North Downs between Maidstone and Chatham in Kent. The road links the M2 and M20 motorways, and the High Speed 1 rail tunnel runs beneath the slope. Wikipedia's article on the A229, citing M. C. Bishop's history of the Roman roads of Britain (2014), says the road largely follows Roman road number 13 in Ivan Margary's classification, which ran from Rochester to Hastings, and that it was turnpiked between Rochester and Maidstone in 1728. Two coaching inns stood at either end of the steep climb. The Blue Bell Hill Picnic Site Trust's history explains that the road between them "was too narrow for horse and coach teams to pass each other, so a bell was rung at either pub when a coach was about to depart". The Upper Bell, which replaced "The Old Blew Bell" at the top of Warren Road in 1820, was demolished in 2013; the Lower Bell, at the foot of the hill, "remains there to this day". Wikipedia dates the present Lower Bell building to 1865, and Paul Sandby painted A Distant View of Maidstone, from Lower Bell Inn, Boxley Hill in 1802. The ghost story is tied to a crash on 19 November 1965. KentOnline, writing on the fiftieth anniversary in 2015, says that Susan Browne, 22, was returning from her hen night when her Ford Cortina spun out of control on the A229 and collided with a Jaguar coming the other way; she was due to marry the RAF technician Brian Wetton the following day. Patricia Ferguson was killed at the scene, and Browne and Judith Lingham died a few days later in a Maidstone hospital. The Wikipedia article, citing the Kentish Advertiser of 26 November 1965 for Browne, gives Browne as from Gillingham and originally from Adelaide, says she died five days after the crash at West Kent Hospital and that she had met Wetton at Woomera, and gives Lingham as from Rochester and Ferguson from Dunfermline, both 22. The sightings take several forms. KentOnline names Bob Vandepeer, who said that in 1962 he gave a lift to a girl on the hill who then vanished from the back of his car, and James Skene, who in 1971 gave a lift to Chatham to a girl in her early twenties who disappeared when she got out. BBC Southern Counties, in pages of 2005, told of Maurice Goodenough, who in 1974 went for help after hitting someone on the A229 and wrapping the injured victim in a blanket; when he returned with police officers only the blanket was there. In November 1992 Ian Sharpe, driving up from Sussex, saw "A girl in white with 'beautiful eyes'" step in front of his car and disappear under the wheels, and two weeks later another driver reported the same thing on the same road. The Kent writers Neil Arnold (Kent Urban Legends, 2013) and Brian Haughton (Famous Ghost Stories, 2011) collected the story. In 2014 the filmmaker Sonya Roseman released The Ghost of Blue Bell Hill, and on the fiftieth anniversary a group of paranormal enthusiasts met at the Lower Bell.

Blue Bell Hill is a public main road, the A229 between the M2 at the top of the hill and the M20 at the bottom. The Lower Bell, the inn named in the hitchhiker story, is at 201 Old Chatham Road, Blue Bell Hill, Aylesford, Kent ME20 7EF, telephone 01634 861127; Wikipedia's photograph caption places it "on the pre-bypass A229". Its website, read on 4 October 2026, presents it as a pub with a restaurant, a beer garden and guest rooms in converted stables, with opening hours from noon. At the top of the scarp Kent Wildlife Trust manages the Blue Bell Hill nature reserve, at Common Road, Aylesford ME5 9RG, OS grid reference TQ743621: five hectares of chalk grassland crossed by the North Downs Way. According to the trust's page, read on 4 October 2026, the free car park at the main entrance has a height barrier and closes at 6.30 pm in summer and 4.30 pm in winter, dogs are allowed, and the paths are unsurfaced public footpaths with kissing gates, narrow, steep and uneven in places. The trust writes that "Essentially this site is for admiring the view, which can be seen from the car park". The ghost walks reported in the local press have been informal: KentOnline reported in 2015 that Susan Vousden, a cleaner from Essex, organised one for the anniversary for about ten ghost hunters and had done the walk before.