The Belchentunnel White Lady

The Belchentunnel is 3.2 Km long and was built in the 1960’s for the N2 motorway to pass beneath the high ground between Eptingen in Basel-Country and Hägendorf in Solothurn. The Eptingen side of the tunnel has become well known for a phantom hitchhiker that would be picked up from the hard shoulder of the motorway only to vanish from the vehicle in question whilst in the Belchentunnel.

This ghost is known as the White Lady as she is described as being an old woman dressed all in white. An article appeared about the ghost in a paper called Blick on 6 January 1981, closely followed by other forms of media taking the story up. It seemed to make the haunting very popular, very quickly.

The experience that seems to be retold time and again happened on 26 September 1983, the ghost was picked up by two female jurists in Eptingen and given a lift through the tunnel. They said she looked middle-aged and pale. Thinking she may be ill they enquired about her health and the white lade confirmed that she was not feeling at all. She then told the two women that something terrible was going to happen. During the trip through the tunnel the front passenger turned to enquire about the white lady’s health again, only to find she had vanished. An impressive feat from a two door car.

I have also come across a reference though that suggests when the hitchhiker was first encountered in 1980, it was male, not female.