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

[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!

[vaspider]

Nope, I've heard that, too, that they talk all the way home, and the driver is grateful for the company/staying awake, so goes back to the house to offer thanks to the girl. This is when he finds out she's dead.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's the version I've heard as well. Not always a girl, though, sometimes an old man (so possibly not strictly a hitch-hiker in that case, because in the ones I've heard he wasn't asking for a lift it was the driver who saw him in the rain and offered the lift -- the 'moral' is that if the driver hadn't been kind and stopped then he would have fallen asleep at the wheel and died). The driver sometimes talks about it to family, neighbours, or in the pub, and then is told that the person was dead.

Dating back to the 1960s at least, I heard it as a counter to the "never pick up strangers" warnings about hitch-hikers, but it has the feel of something a lot older.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

There are phantom hitchhiker stories all over the world. It's really kind of cool.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Wow. That is so cool (and explains why you always understood so easily when I said Rose was maligned).

[vaspider]

The 'moral' there is of course that one should be kind to young women and take them out of bad situations. ;)

[mariadkins.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much the version from the Kentucky mountains, too - we probably brought it over here with us. ;)