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CD 2

unit 4

Haunted by the Past

Chapter 1

The Vanishing Hitchhikers

Page 67

The Vanishing Hitchhikers

One of the most entertaining types of ghost stories is that of the phantom, or vanishing, hitchhiker. It’s also one of the most chilling because, if true, they bring ghosts in very close contact with mortals.

Perhaps more disconcerting still, the stories describe the ghost says looking, acting, and sounding like a living people even physically interacting with the unsuspecting drivers who pick them up.

The basic story usually goes something like this: attire driver traveling at night picks up a strange hitchhiker, drops him or her off at some destination, and then somehow later finds out that the hitchhiker had in fact died months or years earlier, often on that very same date.

Like most ghost stories, and tales of phantom hitchhikers are impossible to verify, and are most often considered to be urban legends. There are many such stories, and it’s up to you to determine whether or not you believe any of them. Here are just a few.

The basketball player

A woman, driving to her sister’s house on a winter evening, sees a boy of about eleven or twelve years of age hitchhiking on the side of the road. She stops for him; he gets into the front seat next to her, and they chat as they drive down the highway.

The boy says he’s a basketball player for a local school, and she sees that, indeed, he has the height and build of an athlete. She also notices that he is not wearing a jacket of any kind, despite the fact that it’s winter.

The boy seems to have no particular destination in mind as he points to the side of the road and asks to be let out there.

The woman is puzzled because she can see no houses or lights anywhere. Before she can pull over to the side of the road, however, the youth simply vanishes. She immediately stops the car, gets out, and looks around, but the boy is nowhere to be seen. She later learns that the same vanishing hitchhiker was first picked up at the same spot twenty-nine years earlier!

The girl on the side of the road

A doctor, while driving home from a country club dance, picks up a young girl in a white dress. She climbs into the back seat of his car because the front seat is crowded with golf clubs, and tells him an address to take her to.

As he arrives at the address, he turns to speak to her but she’s gone. The curious Dr. rings the doorbell of the address given to him by the mysterious girl. A gray-haired man answers the door and reveals that the girl was his daughter. She had died in a car accident exactly two years earlier.

Resurrection Mary

The story of Resurrection Mary begins on a winter night when a young girl named Mary is killed in a car accident while on her way home from a dance. Five years later, a taxi driver picks up a young girl in a white dress. On the same street.

She sits in the front seat and instructs him to drive north. After driving a short distance, she suddenly tells them to stop, and then simply vanishes from the taxi. The taxi is stopped in front of Resurrection Cemetery, where the girl is buried.

According to an account many years later, a woman witnessed Mary locked inside the iron fence of the cemetery. Reportedly, the metal bars of the fence bore the imprints of her hands.

The Smoking Ghost

On a dark winter night, a man stops for a stranger hitchhiking on the side of the road. The stranger is dressed in a military uniform and, after he gets into the car, asks if he can have a cigarette.

The man gives him one, and a lighter with which to light it. With his peripheral vision, the driver sees the flash of the lighter, but then, on turning his head, is astonished to see that his passenger has vanished into thin air.

Only the cigarette lighter remains on the seat

The Grandmother

Two businessman stop for a little old lady in a lavender dress walking along the side of the road in the middle of the night. She tells them she is going to see her daughter and granddaughter and they offered to drive her to the next town.

On the way, she proudly tells them all about her children and grandchildren, such as their names and where they live.

After a while, the men become engrossed in their own business conversation, and when they reach their destination, the old woman is no longer in the back seat. Fearing the worst, the men retraced their route, but do not find the woman anywhere.

Finally, recalling the daughter’s name they go to her house to report what they fear might have been a horrible accident.

The men identify her from photos in the daughter’s house. It turns out that the old woman was buried exactly three years ago that day.