The intersection of four roads, long regarded as an ominous location. Anything that forms the shape of a cross is significant, but crosses made by roads are heavy with symbolic meaning and many people dislike being delayed at such a place for fearing of meeting a ghost, a vampire or death in person. Primitive peoples often erected their altars where roads met, and engaged in human sacrifice there; ever since, crossroads have been associated with death, not least through the tradition errection of the gallows at such spots.
Suicides, vampires and criminals were formerly buried at crossroads in the belief that, should they arise from the grave, their vengeful ghosts would not know which of the roads led back home. In modern times witches' covens have sometimes been known to choose lonely crossroads as their meeting-pace. Authorites on ley lines, the paths of strange mystic power that criss-cross the land, claim that crossroads which intersect such paths are notorious for car accidents and other calamities. Similar traditions also abounded in times gone by about places where the boundaries of three parishes met, through these were usually valued as sites where miraculous cures might be enacted.