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

[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.

[starletfallen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't know if I saw it in a movie or read it or what. XD It's just one of those stories I can't remember NOT knowing.

[lysystratae.livejournal.com]

The jacket on the tombstone is an addition I hadn't heard before; other than that, that's pretty much the same as what I grew up with.

[charleeg.livejournal.com]

This is the one I knew way back in the late 60s-early 70s (oops just dated myself). I grew up in Northeast Arkansas.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

That seems to be the most common variant; that's the one that I grew up with, too.

[baka-kit.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much the one I remember from growing up, except the girl's not wearing a party dress. I vaguely remember that she was wearing "old-fashioned" hippyish clothes. And the "jacket" the guy loans and later finds at her grave is her a red hooded sweatshirt. The biggest difference I remember is that one or both of her parents was waiting up because they knew someone would come on that night -- she'd died twenty-some years ago and kept trying to get home on the anniversary of her death. And I think they told him where to find his sweatshirt?

That's what sticks most in my mind -- that she would keep trying and never make it. *sniffles*

I grew up in Southern California in the eighties.

[redbird57.livejournal.com]

That's the one I've always heard too (rural PA)