A question about hitch-hiking ghosts.

[seanan_mcguire]

Almost everybody's heard the basic hitch-hiking ghost story—dude (usually) gives a girl a ride home, and later finds out that she was actually dead way before she got into the car—but there are some really fascinating regional variants. So here is my question for you:

How does the story go? Is she a victim, a predator, or just a confused kid trying to go home? Is seeing a hitcher like seeing the Bean Nighe—you're just doomed to die now? How does it go?

To be clear, I'm not asking you to make something up; I want to know how, in your part of the country or the world, the story goes. Or, if this is the first time you've encountered the idea (outside Disney's Haunted Mansion), I'd like to know that, too.

Curious cat is curious.

Comments

[aedifica]

The version I'm most familiar with, she's a confused kid trying to get home. Nothing happens to the guy except maybe he gets a fright from learning what happened.

I'm in the Midwest, but I'm not sure if I got this version from campfire stories, books, the internet, or what.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Awesome, thank you.

[lluad.livejournal.com]

The variant I'm familiar with (UK) the ghost is benevolent, and helps the driver get home safely (by keeping them awake, taking the wheel, what have you), and often the hitchhiker is the ghost of someone who died on a bad curve on that same road while driving home late at night some time earlier.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Really?! Yours is the first benevolent hitch-hiking ghost I've ever heard of that wasn't my own Rose (she gets maligned a lot, but it's not her fault, poor dear that she is.)

Thank you so much!

[starletfallen.livejournal.com]

In my neck of the woods (suburban Phoenix, AZ), growing up, the version I heard goes thus:

A guy is driving home on an empty back road/highway at night. It's cold, sometimes raining, but usually not. Suddenly, he sees a girl in a party dress on the side of the road, and pulls over to see if she needs a ride. She's shivering and wet (even if there's no rain), so he gives her his jacket - usually it's a leather jacket or a letterman's jacket, the guy was always a 16-20 type of guy. In school, y'know? Anyway, he asks where she lives, and she gives him directions. He gets to the house, puts the car in park, and looks over at the passenger seat where she was sitting, and it's empty. So he frowns, and goes up to the door, and knocks. When someone answers the door, he asks if a girl who looks like the girl he picked up lives there. The parent tears up and says that a girl matching that description lived there, but she died in a car crash on her way to a formal dance of some sort, on a rainy night - lost control of the car in the rain or something. They show him a picture of their daughter from that night, and it's the girl he picked up, dress and all. In the morning, he goes to the local cemetery on a whim, and finds her grave - his jacket is draped over her tombstone.

So that's the one I grew up on.

[paradisacorbasi.livejournal.com]

Hmm. this sounds familiar to me too, so maybe I have heard this variation. Or read it.

[paradisacorbasi.livejournal.com]

The only time I've ever heard the story was in a song.

And she was just a girl trying to get home. The guy goes to return her sweater to her house, and that's how he finds out from her dad she died in a car crash.

Boy ends up taking the sweater to the graveyard and leaving it there instead.

And as he turns to leave, the girl appears, smiling her gratitude for giving her a ride.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

...this is a song? The hitch-hiking ghost myth is a song? Can you share the title of this song with me? I'll be your best friend...

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

Kid who loves her family just trying to get home; I'm in NH but can't remember where/when I became familiar with the story.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[amanda-nye.livejournal.com]

I've generally heard she is a lost ghost, victim of bad circumstances... doesn't realize they're gone, wants to get home. Driver just ends up spooked.

In one version I heard, she led the driver to something he'd lost

I'm from Southern California, though the versions I've heard were never based in socal or anywhere nearby

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

They almost always seem to be somewhere else, unless they're Chicago-area.

[solomons-pond.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, the versions I heard as a kid were a lot scarier... generally the hitch-hiker was male... and by the end of the story the driver was dead. Driven off the road in the same place where the hitch-hiker died, distracted in the rain, or just plain gobbled by the evil presence... Though some variations had the hitch-hiker just disappearing. It was never nice.

Of course, such stories were told by adults to kids to a) discourage hitch-hiking and b) discourage picking up hitch-hikers. Like it did a _bit_ of good. I spent most my late teen years (15-18) getting around on my thumb.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Thank you!

[ink-books-punk.livejournal.com]

I've heard several versions:

1) Girl gives directions to her house, he pulls up but she's suddenly not in the car, he goes to the door and talks to an old woman who turns out to be her mother, and finds out the girl's been dead for ages. Spooky! (Maine)

2) Girl forces the guy to drive off the road/cliff just after telling him that she was killed in a car accident/hit-n-run. Deadly. (Central valley CA)

3) Kerm's heard: guy picks up girl dressed nice, looks like she's going to a party, she tells him there's an accident up ahead, and as he gets near she disappears, and he sees her body on the stretcher with the EMTs/cops. (Sonora, CA)

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

That's fascinating. Thank you!

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Of course, I've heard the story before. But I can't say what the regional variation is, because I've heard it a bunch of ways, and I don't know which was first. (I will say that growing up, I wasn't big on the urban legendry, so I can't say what was the standard then.)

Fragile Gravity, a webcomic with creators in the Virginia/DC area, did a version (http://unseenllc.com/core.php?archive=20071029) that seems to suggest "confused kid."

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Excellent. Thank you.

[taraljc.livejournal.com]

Resurrection Mary was the first hitch-hiking ghost I ever heard of, and she seems harmless as she disappears from the car once the driver gets to the cemetary.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

I am enlightened in the ways of Resurrection Mary!

[wendolen.livejournal.com]

I grew up in the rural area east of Seattle. I have encountered the story occasionally, but mostly in passing, and couldn't recount it in more detail than you gave above.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[geojlc.livejournal.com]

There was a version in one of the PeeWee Herman movies, but I don't remember which one and I don't remember what happened to the driver... Other than that, I heard the myth in Leslie Fish's Ferryman song. Sorry to be not so helpful... :-)

[geojlc.livejournal.com]

I think I remembered more about the PeeWee one... I think the trucker that picked up the hitchhiking PeeWee was the ghost...

[mpoetess.livejournal.com]

Resurrection Mary was probably the first version I heard too, that wasn't a deliberately-literary one written up for ghost story anthology.

Most of those I've read have the "girl just trying to get home" motif, and include the talk with a surviving parent and the borrowed jacket located on a gravestone.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Very cool. Thank you.

[lysystratae.livejournal.com]

Growing up in Maryland, it was a combo of victim/confused kid trying to go home; the ghost never hurt or tried to hurt the one giving her a ride, and you got the sense that she knew she was dead but she wanted to go home anyway.

ETA: I wasn't going to mention this, but what the hell - my former father-in-law used to say he'd had a ghost hitchhiker. He was coming home late one night from work, on back country roads, and stopped at a stop sign. He was just about to pull off when he realized there was now a man sitting in his truck next to him. He knew it had to be a ghost, since the door hadn't opened and there wasn't anyone for miles in the middle of the woods; he was scared shitless, but figured his best bet was to keep driving and act like nothing had changed. A couple miles down the road, as he drove past an old church with a tiny cemetary, he felt a breeze and the ghost was gone.
We never were able to figure out who the man was; there'd been so many accidents on that road that it was impossible to narrow it down.

[archangelbeth]

You just made all the hairs on my arm stand up, I hope you know.

[rrie-selavy.livejournal.com]

Hitchiking ghost is the victim of a hit and run, from all the local stories.

This is tangentally related, but the story of The Hook? Originated in my hometown (Staten Island, NY), from what I've been told.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Really? Dude, that is awesome.

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm in Chicago and we have Resurrection Mary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_Mary). Link goes to wikipedia but there are lots of resources out there about her and her story.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

I find this fascinating.

[miley-marbhaisg.livejournal.com]

The variant around my area, very rural Southwest Pennsylvania, seems deeply sinister, on the lines of the demon lover stories.

A young man picks up the beautiful, sensual hitcher; usually it's raining in the stories. She's grateful for the ride, typically to some creepy dirt road that he doesn't know, and they make-out or sometimes have sex.

In one she leaves and like most stories, he later finds out she's been dead for X number of years. In another story, she kills him, typically stabbing him or slitting his throat.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

...wow. Okay, you get points for DAMNED CREEPY, and now I want to do a True Thomas riff with your region.

[sylverwolfe.livejournal.com]

Growing up in central NY, it was confused kid just trying to get home. My boyfriend who's lived here in Louisville KY all his life has never heard of it til I just now asked him for the local variations. And I've heard it in song by Blackmore's Night, album The Olde Village Lantern, song title "I Guess It Doesn't Matter Anymore.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Wow, okay. Thank you!

[kyrielle]

I didn't encounter this at all until I heard about it from you, though before this post. Either that or I heard and forgot it - entirely possible; things like this creep me out, and things that creep me out tend to get forgotten hard (especially true of things I encountered when younger).

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Excellent, thank you.

[hms42]

Patricia McKinnok (spelling is wrong, I know) did one in a southern legends book.

I am not sure if its an original story or a retelling of a southern legend. Mostly the story is a bus driver refuses to take a woman to the hospital with a sick child and both die. Supposedly her ghost kills the driver. Sometime later, a new bus driver is not informed of the story and picks up the ghost and helps them out.

Roberta Rogow read the book and does a song based on it called "The Woman in the Snow". (I think I have the lyrics on hand at home. I know I have a few recordings of that song. If I can find the lyrics, I will email them to you.)

I saw someone mentioned the only other one I know of, the LesLac song - Ferryman.

[lysystratae.livejournal.com]

If you can't find the lyrics, I'll bet Louise has them or can get them from her mother.

[all-ephemera.livejournal.com]

Born and raised in Massachusetts, but I don't think I ever heard this story told (at least partially because I am a giant wuss and hate scary movies/books/what have you) but I do recall seeing a variation of it on TV once, and I could swear it was Unsolved Mysteries. Rationally, it's not - they deal with real-life issues - but that's what my memory is telling me. It was years and years ago though, probably early 90's. The version was similar to above - guy sees girl in party dress, picks her up, gets her to her location, goes back the next day to talk with her, gets her mom at the door and finds out she's been dead since, oh, 1955 or so.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

That seems to be the most common variant. Thank you!

[supersniffles.livejournal.com]

'Growing Pains' (the TV show) did a version of it one season.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

I think I vaguely remember that!

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

...wow. Since I can see Mt. Diablo from my house, this is chilling.

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

I know of the story, but I never encountered it as a campfire story or anything, I just know it from the internets. Southern CA, born 1980. I never really *did* boy scouts or anything else that I would've been telling campfire stories on a regular basis, though.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Excellent. Thank you!

[talimena.livejournal.com]

I've heard of such stories (mostly from you, I think!) but don't know a "home" version.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Okay. Thank you!