Music:The Be Good Tanyas, "Keep It Light Enough to Travel."
A question about hitch-hiking ghosts.
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.
PA - person picks up hitchhiking ghost of someone sympathic - teenager, or young mother or nice, young colleg gentlemen (or person in army uniform). Person asks where ghost wants to go, gets directions. In the these stories, the person who picks up the hitchhikers is distracted by something major in their life, or it's pouring down raining, or is very tired or there is something going on that means they shouldn't be driving. Ghost keeps talking to them, to their annoyance, until they are wishing they hadn't picked up the hitchhiker. Then something happens (large puddle, deer across the road) - that if they hadn't been alert ('cause they were annoyed and alert 'cause of the ghost) - that would have killed them. Person stops the car to breathe and recover, and realizes that hitchhiker is no longer there. Sometime searches, never finds anything. Often tells the story later and finds out hitchhiker died along long stretch (normally many miles) of a similar accident.
Benevolent.
NJ - person picks up hitchhiking ghost. Ghost acts strangely. Person gets wierded out. Either this person asks the ghost to leave, and it disappears when it get out of the car, or someone at a gas station sees something odd and helps the person ditch the ghost, or the ghost kills the person. How we the hearer of the story of the ghost killing person know the ghost killed the person is never explained (ie, how does anyone know that it was a ghost if all the interested parties are dead).
curious
April 19 2009, 16:29:06 UTC 8 years ago
Benevolent.
NJ - person picks up hitchhiking ghost. Ghost acts strangely. Person gets wierded out. Either this person asks the ghost to leave, and it disappears when it get out of the car, or someone at a gas station sees something odd and helps the person ditch the ghost, or the ghost kills the person. How we the hearer of the story of the ghost killing person know the ghost killed the person is never explained (ie, how does anyone know that it was a ghost if all the interested parties are dead).
April 21 2009, 01:32:30 UTC 8 years ago