Beware of Hitch-Hiking Ghosts

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Going Our Way?

I pulled along the side
 And offered her a ride
 Like the rolling mist she floated inside
 As we pulled away
 She had nothing to say
 So I guess it doesn't matter anymore

—"I Guess It Doesn't Matter Anymore", Blackmore's Night

You are in a car with a complete stranger, on the highway, where a mistake can easily result in a dangerous car crash. There is something about it that's not entirely comfortable. As if that weren't bad enough, your company might well be not from this world.

Urban Legends of vanishing hitchhikers are very widespread around the world and quite old: In the oldest ones, the vehicles picking up ghosts were still horses and carriages. The stories usually come in four flavors. You know, one happened to a friend of a friend of mine.

Fiction has taken its cue and the variations are manifold. It can be the driver, as well as the hitchhiker, who has some strange qualities.

There's a variation where the apparition will seemingly materialize in front of a moving car. Despite instant braking, it appears they had to have been hit. Getting out and examining the car and environs will not reveal any body. Rest assured, however, that the driver has been "marked."

The trope's name comes from The Haunted Mansion ride at Disney Theme Parks, which ends with this sage piece of advice. As it says this, the cars pass in front of trick mirrors that make it look like ghosts are sitting by the riders.

Ghost Ship is when you place this trope on a ship. Compare Fright Deathtrap.

Examples of Beware of Hitch-Hiking Ghosts include:

Anime and Manga

  • Subverted in the Crayon Shin-chan manga, which has a series of AU short stories where the titular character grows up and becomes a cab driver. One of his lady passengers disappears mid-ride, leaving only a puddle of cold water on the seat. Much to said the ghost/passenger's exasperation, instead of realising that she is a ghost, he just becomes angry that the passenger ran off without paying and peed on the seat.
  • Used in Yuugen Kaisha.

Comic Books

  • Cherry Poptart appears as a phantom hitchhiker in a story in Cherry #9 (actually titled "The Phantom Hitchhiker"). This being a Cherry story, she of course has sex with the truck driver before disappearing.

Film

  • Used in Creepshow 2 when a woman accidentally runs down a hitchhiker; when she drives off instead of helping him or calling for aid, he haunts her all the way home.
  • Inverted in Pee Wees Big Adventure: Pee Wee Herman isn't a ghost, but Large Marge, who picks him up, is. The scene is also pure Nightmare Fuel.

"Be sure to tell 'em Large Marge sent ya!"

  • The "Apparition in front of a moving car" variety appears in both the videogame and movie versions of Silent Hill.
  • Although The Hitcher has a living hitchhiker, John Ryder has no social security number, driver's license, or any other indication that he exists. Oh, and he's a psychopathic killer that beats down anybody he pleases.
  • A ghost of the car-accident causing variety appears in the movie Gothika as well.
  • Hilton Edwards directed a 1951 movie called Return to Glennascaul, starring Orson Welles, which centred around a Vanishing Hitchhiker event.
  • In the 1960 British horror film The City of the Dead (aka Horror Hotel) actor Valentine Dyall plays a centuries-old warlock who hitches a ride with two different characters in the movie and then vanishes from the car as soon as they reach an ancient New England witch village.
  • Freddys Dead the Final Nightmare, the sixth A Nightmare on Elm Street film uses the "Apparition in front of the car" version. A little girl appears on the road as the characters are driving to Springwood, telling them "Go back!". Only one character can see her, and he jerks the wheel, nearly crashing the vehicle. Interestingly, the vision is not a ghost, but actually a manifestation of another character when she was younger. The character in question was actually the one driving, but couldn't see her younger self, presumably because she was fully awake.
    • Freddy himself does this in the fourth film, but it's a trick. The protagonist attempts to run him down, but he is revealed to be an illusion, and she crashes into a tree instead.
      • As a Mythology Gag, he pulls the same stunt in the remake (except the protagonists crash into a ditch, instead of a tree).
  • Dust Devil, a 1993 cult film by Richard Stanley set in South Africa was, according to the DVD commentary, inspired by the director's memory of being told the Vanishing Hitchhiker legend as a youngster.
  • A popular Bollywood horror movie of the 1970's Bees Saal Baad has the sequence where the leading man gives a lift to a beautiful woman on a stormy night. Her manner is mysterious and answers questions vaguely and she asks to be dropped off at a gate. He says "But that's a cemetery!". She looks at him, smiles enigmatically and gets off the car and walks into the cemetery. The gate opens automatically for her.
  • Field of Dreams has an inversion: the protagonists are on their way home when they pick up the hitchhiker, and they take him home with them, rather than to a destination of the hitchhiker's choice. An added twist: the ghost is a younger version of someone they've already met ...
  • Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave ends with a Tarman zombie holding a sign reading "rave or bust" on the side of a highway. When no one stops, he gives up, angrily throws the sign at the ground, and starts walking. Brains!
  • Graveyard Gus tells a story about a couple who have a rather nasty encounter with Mary Hatchet's ghost, which they pick up one night in Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet.
  • The first sign that the Mind Screw is starting in Dead End is when the family picks up a mysterious woman in white carrying a baby, which is later revealed to be dead.

Folklore

  • The Phantom Hitchhiker a very common urban legend in several parts of the states, but the stories do seem to center around Chicago, where she is affectionately known as Resurrection Mary - from Resurrection Cemetery, where the final scene of the story takes place. A girl would be found on the side of a road; a friendly man (it's usually a man) would offer her a ride and take her to an address. Usually he turns around and she's gone, leaving a wet seat. Some stories follow up by having the man go to the address and learn that the girl has been dead for years (usually her death is reported as a traffic accident). Sometimes he visits her grave and finds the coat he lent her draped neatly over the headstone. In one particularly grisly variant, he actually digs up the grave, and finds the girl's remains wrapped in his coat.
    • The story usually takes place on Archer Avenue near Resurrection Cemetery.
    • Some versions get even spookier, with the girl giving prophetic warnings.
    • Some versions involve her appearing in front of a moving car. Drivers have reported actually running her down with their car. When they get out, she's gone. In other reports the car drives right through her, and she then disappears through Resurrection Cemetery's gates.
  • According to legend, there is a ghost of a hitchhiking man on Route 44 near Rehoboth, Massachusetts.
  • Legend has it that there is a hitchhiker ghost in Malaysia that has a detachable head, who loves to demonstrate to those who give him a lift. One of them was persuaded to stop when a holy man threatened to toss their head out of the car window.
  • Mormons have some folklore (that gets repeated so much not even gullible people believe it anymore) of a (Mormon) person who picks up a hitchhiker. They talk, (sometimes about events and current events) and after a while the hitchhiker asks the driver "do you have a full year's supply of food?" and then disappears.
    • The LDS church encourages its members to have at least a full year's supply of food, for themselves and to share with neighbors, in the event of an emergency.
  • The Hawaiian version of the Phantom Hitchhiker casts the volcano goddess Pele in the role of the mysterious hitcher. She can appear as a young girl, a "Lady" who exudes a royal presence, an extremely old woman, or all three: in one memorable story a slightly drunk guy picks up a young teenager who seems to age a little every time the driver glances at her. The last time the driver sees her, she is now an extremely old woman! She laughs loudly and then vanishes, instantly sobering the guy up. The early meeting he has to go to the next morning is "quite successful".
    • There is no clear consensus about what to do if you find yourself passing Pele on the road. Most people say you should pick her up out of respect and she'll bring you luck or save your life - the usual reason she appears is to warn people. Her MO is to sit silently then suddenly say something like "look out ahead" and disappear. When you stop the car in shock you'll find you just missed slamming into a boulder/fallen tree/rockslide. Ignore her and something terrible will happen, possibly your own death due to not being warned about the boulder/fallen tree/rockslide ahead. Others say if you pretend you didn't see her in the first place you can escape her.
  • Yet another Hawaiian bus was haunted by a Chinese woman who "reeked of tons of dead, rotting fish" who shorted out the bus until the bus driver agreed to take her wherever she wanted. She guided him to an old Chinese cemetery, with "stones so old their names were eroded away". (all stories are from Obake Files)
  • One story inverts this trope - a living hitchhiker is picked up by a trucker who gives him money for coffee and tells him to go to a certain coffee shop, with the instructions to say that '(trucker's name) sent me'. When the hitchhiker does so, the coffee shop owner tells him how that trucker died because he drove off a cliff rather than hit a school bus, and then refuses to accept payment for the coffee, instructing the hitchhiker to keep the money in memory of the trucker. So in that story, the ghost is the driver rather than the hitchhiker.
    • Large Marge from Pee Wee is a direct reference to this old tale; the trucker's name is traditionally "Big Joe."
    • This may be more properly an example of God Was My Co-Pilot (though less divine.)
  • A certain hilly road in rural England is especially prone to this, having several reports a year. One man reported having struck a small girl who appeared out of nowhere; seeing that she was bleeding, he gave her a blanket to cover herself with and went for the police. When he returned with the constable, there was nobody there, the blanket was lying on the ground, clean, and the bloodstains had vanished from the lorry..
  • Detroit's area of Michigan also has a woman in white causing accidents in a nearby suburb.
  • Another variant found in on the East African Coast where the local Bantu culture is heavily influenced by Arab Muslim culture involves paranormal beings called "djinni" (English genies). The story typically takes the form of a beautiful girl who is picked up by cross country truckers who are looking for some way to stay awake on their long journeys. At some point the truck driver will look over at his beautiful passenger and discover to his horror that she has goat's legs - like the god of mischief Pan. At this point the girl or djinni laughs and disappears, although in the worst case scenario, the driver is so shocked that he causes the truck to crash, which was the original intention of the djinni.
  • There are stories of a ghost appearing as little old hunched back man, wearing a brown trench coat and Bogie style hat, hitching along Route 66 between El Reno and Weatherford, Oklahoma. One report states that after picking him up, he wouldn't talk to the driver, and soon the old man tried to jump out of the moving car. The driver immediately stopped to let him out, only to see the same man hitching farther up the road. Others report hitting the man, but finding no one there when they got out to check.
  • New Jersey has Shades of Death Road where legend has it that, among lots of other haunted stuff, a girl died in a car crash after being stood up for her senior prom. The crash is traditionally said to have been caused by a deer, and now drivers will see a girl in a prom dress on the side of the road. If they don't stop to pick her up they will crash themselves on the winding road, most likely because of a deer.
    • New Jersey roads tend to have a few of these, other stuff like this include stories of a ghostly truck that actively tries to run cars off the road.
  • There is an Australian version of this in the Newcastle area. After a large bridge was built over the road she started disappearing right under the bridge instead of further up near a hospital. A common story is that she was hit by a car while hitchhiking and died just before reaching the hospital.
  • Another version of this story from another part of the US (possibly upstate New York) involves the ghosts of a young boy and a young girl who dart out in front of cars at night, trying to cause accidents.
  • Maine has at least two versions of this. One is in downeast Maine, and supposedly the ghost will cause your car to crash if you don't stop for her- and the crash will be fatal. The other is more mellow; on Rt. 26 in Poland, a woman in white can be picked up or might even just appear in a passing car- both have occurred. When she is picked up, she will supposedly give a prediction of the future. A few years ago, a 16-year-old named David was seen speeding on 26, but was deliberately flagging down a cop; he had just had the woman disappear from his car and was completely terrified. The incident made the local papers.
  • Dallas's hitchhiking ghost has a name: The Lady of White Rock Lake. The story follows the usual format—drivers find a young woman standing on the side of the road near the lake, or on the shore of the lake itself—and she's always dripping wet. She requests to be delivered to a certain address, but disappears, leaving nothing but a wet patch on the seat. Naturally, inquiry with the man living at the address reveals that his daughter drowned in a boating accident some weeks (or years, etc) ago, when the boat she was on capsized.

Literature

  • Inverted in the Stephen King novella Riding the Bullet, where the hitchhiking hero gets picked up by a ghost.
  • In his book The Areas of My Expertise, John Hodgman advises readers to pick up the hitchhiking ghost, promising that you will be surprised at what happens next.
    • The frequency of the hitchhiker's appearance is also a handy way of keeping track of time if you don't have a clock.
  • The above Apparition variety is beautifully subverted in the Douglas Adams novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, where the driver of a car is horrified when he sees the ghost of his boss appear in front of the car. The ghost, on the other hand, is horrified to see another ghost in the car's passenger seat.
  • Older Than Print: A variation appears in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Merchant and future Liu Bei supporter Mi Zhu picked up a woman in his carriage. His genteel behaviour during the trip caused the woman to reveal that she was a fire spirit, sent to burn down his home in the night. She wasn't allowed to shirk her duty, but she did tell him that if he hurried home he would have time enough to evacuate his family and valuables, before vanishing. Mi Zhu took the advice, so when his home did burn down later that night, everything important was saved.
  • The book Monster Road subverts it- the heroes expected the ghost girl to disappear when their car took her home, but when they got there, she forgot and her still-living mother saw her in the car and welcomed her back into the house in a happy ending. Since her mother was still alive and didn't seem very old, she probably hadn't been a ghost for very long, explaining why she forgot to disappear.
    • Actually, the girl did know to disappear and it was implied from conversation with the mother (before seeing the girl) that the daughter had done the hitchhiking-then-disappearing trick to several others before the protagonists. The reason the ghost girl cannot disappear is that the narrator's uncle had her buckle her seatbealt before giving her a lift - a seatbelt which sticks and she is unable to open to disappear in time.
  • A different version appeared in one story in a book called Railway Ghosts and Highway Horrors. A woman driving home late at night and running out of gas spots a hitchhiker on the side of the road. It's late, and she's alone, and he's grubby-looking, so she doesn't pick him up. She gets further on and comes down a hill...to see the same hitchhiker by the roadside. grinning at her. She passes him again, now very unnerved, and is almost home when she sees him a third time--and this time, he's holding a butcher knife. She's going up the final hill before her house, almost out of gas... The police find her car the next morning, sitting on empty at the bottom of the hill. She's in the driver seat with a cut throat. The story ends with "Needless to say, the killer was never found."
    • But ... who tells us the story then?
  • The Sparrow Hill Road series is written from the point of view of the ghost. She's not malicious, but she frequently shows up for a driver who's going to crash soon, so she gets a bad rap.

Live Action TV

"Going my way?"

    • This episode was based on an episode of the Suspense radio show (see below).
  • The Supernatural episode "Roadkill", where we see it from the ghost's perspective. For that matter, it happened in the pilot.
  • In The Mighty Boosh season 1 episode "Hitcher", Howard Moon picks up one of these.

"I'm the Hitcher! Lemme put you in the pitcha!"

  • In the "Girl on the Road" episode of the obscure TV series The Veil hosted by Boris Karloff, a motorist aids a girl stranded on the highway. After she vanishes, he searchs for her, eventually discovering she had died years before in a wreck on the stretch of road where he met her.
  • A Happy Days episode has Fonzie getting involved with a girl who he comes to believe might be a ghost. (It turns out to be All Just a Dream.)
  • A longer timeframe than usual, but Kara Thrace in Battlestar Galactica. Dies, turns up again and hitches a lift, gives mystical prophecies and information, vanishes into thin air when her "task" is done.
  • In the pilot episode of The Greatest American Hero, Ralph and Bill keep passing the ghost of a dead man in the desert.
  • Growing Pains: In a Halloween episode, Mike claims he had met a beautiful teen-aged ghost named Kara, who had died 17 years earlier in a car accident. An in-joke in the episode is that, along the way, Mike and Kara stop at a roadside bar, where a talent show—featuring all of the guests dressed as dead celebrities—is taking place. Of course, Mike's making up the entire tale.


Music

  • In a subversion of this trope, David Allen Cole wrote a song "The Ride" where he is given a lift to Nashville by the ghost of Hank Williams, who gives some advice on how to become a country music star.
    • Keith Bryant's version of "The Ride" is about an amateur Nascar driver that gets a ride to Daytona International Speedway from Dale Earnhart. At the end of the ride Earnhart cried when they arrive at Daytona, pulling onto the track he says "This is where you get out boy, cause Number 3 ain't comin' back."
  • Inverted and possibly subverted in the David Ball song, "Riding With Private Malone." A young man buys and restores a 1966 Corvette whose original owner, one Private Andrew Malone, had died in the Vietnam War. The car turns out to be haunted, but not unpleasantly so. The story ends when the young man has a serious, dude-my-car-is-on-fire accident: Malone's ghost pulls the young man out of the car and vanishes.
    • Going into a bit more detail, the car is haunted by the dead soldier, who took pleasure in riding along with the new owner (just at the edge of the man's sight) whom he had left a letter to (via the glovebox), encouraging whoever claimed the car to enjoy it, as he had wished he could have before he shipped out and died. The song is a bit of a Tear Jerker.
      • In the end, when the accident happens, Private Malone repays the new owner for the rides by dragging him free of the crash. A bystander claims to have seen a soldier rescue the driver, but didn't get the man's name. The driver ends the song, thanking God that the soldier was tagging along with him, knowing he wouldn't have survived otherwise. Sniff.
  • "Bringing Mary Home" by Country Gentlemen is more sad than scary.
  • "I Guess It Doesn't Matter Anymore", the above song by Blackmore's Night.
  • "State Road 25" by ThouShaltNot, which is sung from the point of view of the ghostly passenger.
  • "Phantom 309" by Red Sovine depicts Sovine thumbing a ride with a trucker, who gives his name as Big Joe. When he lets Sovine out at a truck stop, he gives him a dime for a cup of coffee. When Sovine gets that cup and says "Big Joe's set me up", silence overtakes the truck stop before one of the patrons tells Sovine the story of Big Joe, who died ten years earlier after crashing his rig to spare a schoolbus he hadn't seen in time to stop after topping a hill. (The song was later covered by Tom Waits.)
  • The Swirling Eddies released a song on their Outdoor Elvis album (1990) called "Urban Legends." In the lyrics, the narrator decides to believe any and all urban legends following an encounter with a vanishing hitchhiker.
  • The contemporary folk-style song "Ferryman" by Mercedes Lackey and Leslie Fish offers another version of the reversal. The encounter here is between a young girl seeking to cross a river in a violent storm, and a ferryman who agrees to take her without charge. Although the tone implies an unworldly nature to the girl, in the end it is the ferryman who is revealed as the ghost. This version includes a garment as a token: the girl's shawl, left as a pledge for the fare, is found in the morning on the ferryman's grave.
  • The Child Ballad of "The Suffolk Miracle" (Child #272) has this plot (with a horse instead of a car). In the ballad, the hitchhiker is the protagonist's lover, who died of grief when her father prevented him from seeing her; it also makes use of the reappearing garment device (in this case, a handkerchief which shows up in the man's grave).
  • Country Joe McDonald wrote and performed a song about a vanishing hitchhiker called "Hold On It's Coming", later covered by New Riders of the Purple Sage.
  • Stan Ridgway's "Camouflage" is a very odd variant where the ghost of a dead Marine helps another Marine survive a battle in Vietnam, and was written in imitation of and as a homage to "Phantom 309".
  • Dickey Lee's 1965 hit "Laurie (Strange Things Happen)" has a variant of this without the hitchhiking. The singer meets a girl at a dance, takes her home, and loans her his sweater when she mentions being cold. When he goes back to retrieve the sweater, her father answers the door and says she died a year ago. Something compels the singer to visit the graveyard, where he finds her grave with his sweater lying atop it.
    • This is much closer to the original story of Mary Bregovy (1913-1934), from which the Resurrection Mary story evolved.


Mythology

  • Many pre-Christian mythologies in Europe have similar stories relating to individuals encountering wandering gods looking for a room for the night or on the road. It was considered a very good idea to give them room and board with stories of those who refused being punished and those who gave willingly being rewarded for their hospitality. In Norse Mythology Odin is a particularly common culprit in these stories and is usually identified either by Him missing an eye, a broad-brimmed hat, or a long coat often all of the above being involved.
  • The Xenu story in Scientology tells how, 75 million years ago, the galactic emperor Xenu brought billions of people to Earth and killed them, and your body is covered in their souls, causing all your problems. Fortunately, they can help you with that.
  • An early Japanese version of the trope involves the "Ghost of the Rashomon Gate" in old Heian Kyo. People have been vanishing mysteriously in the vicinity of the Rashomon Gate and a daring young swordsman decides to do something about it. However his watch proves completely uneventful and he is on his way home when he encounters a pretty young girl astray in the bad part of town and looking for a lift. He takes her up on his horse behind him but, luckily for him, turns his head just in time to catch her turning into a demon. He cuts off her arm with his sword and she vanishes upward like a rocket. Badly rattled the young man returns home, locking the severed arm in a chest. A few days later a woman claiming to have been his first nanny comes to visit. He pours out the whole story to this sympathetic listener and is persuaded to show her the arm. Predictably the old woman immediately turns into the demon, grabs the arm and vanishes again - this time for good.


Radio

  • In 1942, the radio show Suspense broadcast an episode titled "The Hitchhiker" in which Orson Welles plays a man who repeatedly sees a mysterious hitchhiker while driving cross-country. This was later turned into The Twilight Zone episode described above. The twist is the same in both versions.
    • Versions also appeared on Campbell Playhouse and Mecury Summer Theater, also starring Orson Welles.


Tabletop Games

  • GURPS Infinite Worlds also has a double inversion: troubled people might get picked up by a mysterious stranger who gives them life-affirming advice before dropping them off. Turns out he's some kind of supernatural being (not necessarily a ghost) who drives across worlds for this very purpose.
  • New World of Darkness' Geist: The Sin Eaters mentions this in its rulebook, as one of the titular Sin Eaters picks up a ghost hitchhiker, hears her story, commiserates, and helps the ghost pass on as the car passes a cemetery.
    • The trope also gets mentioned in the Midnight Roads splatbook, where it's mentioned that all sorts of supernaturals are known for pulling this off. In fact, it's a popular feeding method for road-wandering vampires, who use Dominate and/or Obfuscate to pull off the vanishing part when they're done.


Video Games

  • The "Apparition in front of a moving car" variety appears in both the videogame and movie versions of Silent Hill.
    • It's also used—sort of—in the Nancy Drew game, The Haunting of Castle Malloy.
  • A phantom hitchhiking woman may be picked up in Steambot Chronicles.
  • In the opening dream sequence of Alan Wake, the title player character runs down a phantom hitchhiker, who then proceeds to menace him with an axe.


Web Animation

  • The Happy Tree Friends Halloween Episode "Without a Hitch" features this trope. Subverted when the only thing really weird about the ride is Flaky's nervous hallucinations of Evil Flippy killing her... which results in them crashing into a telephone pole.


Web Original


Western Animation

  • An episode of Freaky Stories tells the classic version of the urban legend. A man picks up a hitchhiking girl on the road; she disappears during the drive but leaves her jacket. The man goes to her house to return the jacket, but is greeted by a woman saying the girl died several years ago, wearing that same jacket.
    • Another episode (one actually set Twenty Minutes Into the Future, complete with hover cars) had the teenaged hitchhiker turn out to be a (non-evil) old hag.
  • The "Apparition in front of the car" variant is used again in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series - the Batmobile turns a corner and Batman thinks he's just managed to run Robin down, though in fact it's a hallucination caused by the Scarecrow's fear gas.
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