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.
I think all the different variations I've heard have been mentioned, and I couldn't easily track down where I heard each of them, since it was just one of those campfire/ghost story things that would get brought out every once in a while or show up books of folktales... (Actually, I take it back... that is a variation, though a very minor one... I'm pretty sure one of the Irish folktale books had a couple old variations, though in at least one it was a faerie, not a ghost. And basically went 'if you helped, then they'd reward you, if you turned them down and told them to walk, they'd cause problems with your cart or horse. Which brings us to the Pele-as-hitchiker legends that go around Hawaii. I know, not quite the same, but still feeds into a lot of the same plotlines.)
I do think I got the "Driver takes her up to the house and there are lights on and it all looks fine and clearly people live there, then he goes back the next day and it's abandoned and neglected and empty. Driver asks someone else and they say 'Oh, that family moved out after their daughter died ten years ago.. actually would have been ten years ago last night.'" variation at least a couple times. Sometimes in the context of he just moved into the neighborhood/town.
curious
April 19 2009, 17:01:54 UTC 8 years ago
I do think I got the "Driver takes her up to the house and there are lights on and it all looks fine and clearly people live there, then he goes back the next day and it's abandoned and neglected and empty. Driver asks someone else and they say 'Oh, that family moved out after their daughter died ten years ago.. actually would have been ten years ago last night.'" variation at least a couple times. Sometimes in the context of he just moved into the neighborhood/town.
April 21 2009, 01:32:56 UTC 8 years ago