12 Terrifying Ghost Stories From Around The World

6. The White Woman Of Belchen Tunnel

Underground tunnels for cars are terrifying enough on their own, and we don't mean just because of that one UNKLE video. There's the darkness, the claustrophobic feeling of being below ground, and the inhuman howl that traffic makes as it passes through, engine noise echoing off of the stark concrete walls. Yeesh.

And at nighttime, when the traffic is at a minimum, it just gets worse, because if anything bad happens you've got no escape but to go forwards or turn around, and you could still be in the tunnel for what feels like an eternity. Which means they're not quite as unusual a setting for a contemporary ghost story as you might think.

One such modern myth sprung up with regards to the Belchen Tunnel in Switzerland, which connects Basel to Chiasso, in the form of the "white woman" ("weisse Frau") of the Bölchentunnel ("Bölchen" is local dialect for "Belchen"). Beginnings in 1981 stories of an old white-clothed woman began circulating, who appears out of nowhere and sometimes tries to catch a ride off drivers. After being picked up by local tabloids Basel Police received dozens of phone calls of people seeing the White Woman.

In 1983 were two jurists claimed to have picked up a pale, middle-aged woman who, when asked if she was okay, replied "No, unfortunately not. I am not well at all. Something really awful is going to happen, something very dreadful!"

When the pair looked to the back seat where the hitch hiker had sat, they found she had disappeared. Probably the second most creepy thing a hitch hiker could do, but creepy nonetheless.