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

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Whether that's an urban legend or a made-up modification, I salute it with great vigor.

The Woman In The Snow

[hms42]

Sorry about the long post, but I don't know how to put in a cut.

Roberta will be printing the music (along with the lyrics) in her next RecRoom Rhymes (#17) this summer. I can pass along a recording if you want to hear her music.

THE WOMAN IN THE SNOW
Based on a story by Patricia McKissack (which was based on a popular “Urban Legend”

Lyrics by Roberta Rogow.

There’s stories that they tell of spooks, and haints and ghosts and such,
And educated people don’t believe them very much;
But here’s a story that’s for real, I tell you ‘cause I know:
Of Montgomery, Alabama and the Woman In The Snow.

Jim Grady was a driver on the old Montgomery line,
He wasn’t good for very much, but driving suited fine;
He was a mean and ugly drunk, a nasty red-neck lout,
He was so loud and rotten that the Kluxers threw him out!

He hated all the passengers, ‘cause most of them were Black.
He’d take their fares and make them walk outside to get to the back;
And then sometimes he’d drive away, and leave them standing there,
Not only were they late to work, they’d had to pay two fares.

It don’t snow in Montgomery much, but on this winter night,
The snow was falling all around, the moon was shining bright,
And Grady saw a woman, and he heard her plaintive call,
She wasn’t dressed for cold, and held a baby in a shawl.

“Oh, Mister, get me into town, my baby is so sick,
She’s coughing and she’s feverish, she needs a doctor quick.
I haven’t got the money, but if you can trust me now,
I promise that tomorrow I will pay, no matter how.”

But Grady sat there in his bus, he looked at her awhile,
He saw how poorly they were dressed, the woman and her child;
He sneered at her, “If you can’t pay the fare, then you don’t ride”.
He drove away, and left her and her child to freeze outside.

They found them the next morning, frozen solid in the snow,
And Grady, he was questioned, but they had to let him go.
“I didn’t know the two of them would perish in the cold,
The rule’s ‘No fare, no ride’, and I just did like I’d been told.”

A year went by, and then another, still no sign of snow,
But then there came a day when flakes came down, in moonlight’s glow,
The Blackbird bus went off the road and skidded down the hill,
The passengers all got out safe, but Grady, he was killed.



For twenty years or more the drivers worried when it snowed,
They all would swear they saw that woman standing by the road;
It got so that they called her by her name, and they would say,
“Be careful when it snows, you’d better watch for Eula May.”

Change comes slowly in the South, but it comes for all of us,
And one day someone new showed up to drive the Montgomery bus;
A Veteran of Foreign Wars, well liked around the town,
But one thing made him different: his skin… and name… were Brown.

The other drivers hated him, they called him names that hurt,
They gave him all the lousy shifts, they treated him like dirt;
His friends all asked, “Why do you take it?” Brown said, “I don’t mind,
I’m opening a door for all who follow me, behind.”

One winter night Brown had the last bus on the Blackbird route,
He put on his warm jacket, and his took his old bus out,
And since none of the other drivers gave him time of day,
Nobody thought to warn him to “watch out for Eula May”.

He saw them in the moonlight, as the snow began to fall:
A woman in a ragged dress, a baby in a shawl.
He stopped to let them on the bus, he said, “I’ll pay the fare,
Your baby’s sick, and you need help, I’ll gladly get you there.”

And then to put her at her ease, he talked of many things,
He told her of that preacher-man, young Martin Luther King.
He said, “He made us walk the walk, he sure kicked up a fuss,
And that’s how come a Black man’s driving this Montgomery bus.”

He got her to the hospital, that’s clear across the town,
He said,”Take care of the baby,” and he watched as she got down,
And then she vanished in the snow, but before she went away,
She said, “My baby’s well now, you’ve the thanks of Eula May.”

There’s stories that they tell of Spooks, and Haints and ghosts and such,
And educated people don’t believe them very much;
But here’s the story that I tell my children, ‘cause I know:
That Eula May is happy now, that Woman in the Snow.

Re: The Woman In The Snow

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Thank you!