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NEWS that the legend of the Lemon Tree Passage "ghost" has inspired a movie brought back chilling memories for Charlestown resident Tanya Locking.
Tanya and her friend Leanne Kakoulidis say they lived that movie decades before it became a script, and the experience was far from entertaining.
"I was on the road with [Leanne] when I was about 19, which was 26 years ago, and we were coming home after midnight from Nelson Bay after watching DV8 when a single light out of nowhere appeared," Tanya recounted. "I didn't really think much of it except that it was very close behind me.
"When I started to comment to my friend about the goose riding behind me the light just disappeared. I thought he was going to ram us.
"While we were chatting the light reappeared again out of nowhere. My friend turned to see it as well.
"I told her to climb in the back seat and have a look, but she wouldn't, she was too freaked out.
"I asked her to stick her head out the window to have a good look and when she did she looked at me scared, as she said there wasn't any noise that a motorbike would make and we were going too fast for a pushbike.
"We started to panic and drove faster but the light stayed behind us for at least a half kilometre."
The girls never mentioned it until about 15 years later when someone brought up the legend of the Lemon Tree Passage light.
The tale involves two young men in a motorcycle accident in the late 1980s; the rider supposedly lost his leg and his pillion passenger died.
Every now and then the ghost supposedly appears to stalk young motorists.
Indeed this is the plot of the movie Lemon Tree Passage, filmed last year and starring Jessica Tovey and Pippa Black.
Sceptics have attempted to attribute the phenomenon to a trick of light via a combination of lights, speed and bends in the road.
But Leanne says she looked at the light directly.
"I haven't thought about that night in 25 years," she said. "I know it was freaky. I couldn't hear any motor engine noise but I tell you there was a headlight there right behind us.
"I know what I saw, it was a headlight, it wasn't off in the distance, it was behind, three or five car lengths.
"We were dead set sober that night and straight. It was weird and scary and I was never so happy to get on Stockton Bridge and get back to the lights of the city."