A SERIES of road accidents at a notorious blackspot in the Herefordshire village of Stoke Lacy may be the result of the road being haunted.

In the past 18 months 26 vehicles have ended up in the hedge on both sides of the A465 on the hill between Stoke Lacy Village Hall and the parish church. The accidents have taken place at the same spot, at low speed and, mysteriously, some drivers have reported feeling as if the steering wheel has been pulled from their hands.

But a strange conversation in a Bromyard pub with Herefordshire councillor Richard James suggests the drivers may be right and that the road could be haunted by the troubled spirit of someone who died in an accident in Stoke Lacy 60 years ago.

Now Hereford Diocese deliverance minister the Reverend Keith Crouch has been asked to investigate by the parish clerk Carole Surman.

Coun James said the parish council had asked him to look into the accidents because it was concerned about speeding through the village, but a series of surveys had shown vehicles were not travelling that fast.

"We've tried better signage, reflective bollards and even had the surface of the road tested for gripability, but nothing seems to have made any difference," he said.

Coun James himself has actually witnessed an accident taking place when he was travelling in the other direction and said he was surprised because the driver had not been going very fast.

"She said it felt like someone had pulled the steering wheel, which got me thinking," he said.

But what was to really set him thinking was when a man he had never met before came up to him one evening in the Crown & Sceptre and said: "You're worried about a piece of road. Don't worry, no one will be hurt".

The next time he visited the pub, the man had left a note behind the bar for him which said that a girl, whose name began with the letter P, had died in Stoke Lacy in the 1930s or 1940s in a black Ford car after a struggle over the steering wheel.

"It was spooky. I hadn't discussed it with anyone," said Coun James.

He discussed the conversation with the parish clerk, who lives close to the scene of the accidents.

"What I find strange is that we have all these accidents but nobody ever gets hurt," said Mrs Surman, who has now contacted the diocese deliverance minister.

Recently she was asked to call the police after yet another accident.

"I asked, half jokingly, if the driver had said that it felt like someone yanked the steering wheel and he had," she said.

"I think there is something in this," said Coun James. "It would be negligent and ignorant to ignore the possibility. The last thing I want to see is continued accidents at Stoke Lacy," he said.

Farmer Robert Barrett, who owns the fields on both sides of the road and has to keep repairing the hedges, said there had been 26 similar accidents in the past 18 months.

"We wouldn't have had that many in the previous 40 years," said Mr Barrett, who has witnessed three accidents himself and can't understand how they happen.

"Something needs to be done or someone is going to be killed as sure as night follows day," he said.